The Consequences of Time Travel
by Arjen
Summary: When going back in time to fix a problem you really should try not to mess up the timeline.
1. Prologue

**Title: The Consequences of Time Travel  
Author: Arjen  
Length: About 36.000 words  
Summary: When going back in time to fix a problem you really should try not to mess up the time-line.  
Pairings: Xander/Dawn, Xander/Faith, the rest is fairly as in canon. Sorta.  
Rating: This story might not be suitable for young children.  
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer  
Disclaimer: All characters and other recognizable things are property of Mutant Enemy, ADV films, and whoever else wants to lay claim to them. Everything that I thought up is made using their property so I won't claim that either.  
Feedback: Be critical, and my writing improves. Praise me, and I will feel good. A combination of these is my favorite.  
My thanks go to Era and The Unicorn, for their help in ensuring that this story makes sense and is readable.**

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Prologue**

Stretching her body, Faith made herself more comfortable on the couch. Hanging out here with the Scoobies was pretty relaxing, and gave her the time to think some stuff over.

As usual, she first turned her attention to her current situation. Her life was pretty good at the moment and she really had no reason to complain. So she didn't. Sure, looking back she knew that there had been some pretty shitty moments, but most of the time these last couple of years had been great. She also knew who was an important reason for that, and looking at the young man she realized that the time had come to finally receive some answers.

Of course, he'd kept his secrets for years, but she knew that he was finally close to spilling them. And while asking the most important question would have to wait until she'd buttered him up some more there was another question that she wanted the answer to, and he would answer that one tonight. "Hey X," she started.

Xander turned around from where he was talking to Red and her girl, and smiled at her. "Yeah F?"

"Remember how you promised me that you'd tell me about the chick who plucked your cherry?"

"Oh, ew. I really don't want to hear that story," B joked while throwing a pillow at her. "Can't you ask that when the two of you are alone or something? There are some things I really don't want to know."

"Shit B, I didn't know you were that jealous of the chick. I'm sure if you'd asked him nicely, the X-man would have given you a ride as well. It's not like he's been celibate since you know."

"Faith!" B screeched.

"What?" Fath smirked. "Trust me, he's good at what he does. The things he can do with his tongue are simply-"

"Faith!" This time it wasn't just B who wanted her to stop as Red reacted the same way.

Faith only shrugged though. The two of them might protest as much as they wanted, she knew that they wanted to hear the story as well. "Either the X-man talks, or I do. Your choice."

The room was silent for a few seconds as the others weighed their choices. In the end though, Buffy and Willow looked at each other and with a resigned nod gave into the pressure. After all, they had heard her talk often enough to know what the subject would turn into. Not that X would be talking about something else, but he'd probably use other words. Ones they were more comfortable with.

It was Buffy who voiced their decision. "Okay. Xander? Please? For me? To preserve my sanity?"

"Hey! That's not nice," Faith protested.

"Your threats weren't nice either."

"They weren't threats. Red would want to hear about Xander's tongue, I'm sure she would love to get some pointers." Wiggling her eyebrows at Red's girl, Faith was happy to see how her face turned completely red. Oh yeah baby, she still had it.

"I-I do not."

"Oh come on Red, we both know that ain't true."

"Xander's my friend. I do not have to know how he can use his tongue, or anything else for that matter," Willow told her with a determined look. Yeah right.

"Whatever Red. It doesn't matter anyway. We'll talk about it later, but right now it's time for the X-man to tell his story."

"I don't think there's a way I can still get out of this, is there?" Xander asked with a resigned sigh. Not that he had any right to complain as he'd been the one who promised to tell her.

And considering the way the three others gave a big "No" as well it meant that she'd been right about them wanting to hear it as well. Even if they needed to be pressured a bit.

"Alright then," Xander acknowledged while getting up. "In that case I'm first getting a drink. You've waited this long, and can wait a bit longer to prevent me from dehydrating."

Of course, she couldn't let that go without a comment. "Fancy word X, where'd you pick that up?"

"My word of the day calendar of course, where else?" Xander shot back.

"Yeah right," she told him. "Like I'm gonna believe that."

"Believe what you want," he smiled back. "Anyone else want something?"

When only Red indicated she wanted a refill, X collected her glass and made his way to the kitchen. The moment he got there, B could no longer keep quiet. "He's actually going to tell us about everything, isn't he?"

"I know," Red answered excitedly. "Do you think he'll tell us everything?"

"Well, personally I'm kinda hoping for the nice and hot details of when he lost his cherry, but that's just me," Faith decided to chime in.

"We know that," Buffy told her, "but he's never told us about any of the other stuff either. I mean, I know that something happened besides the thing I don't really want to hear about, but he never wanted to talk about it and it was about then that he started with the cryptic stuff as well."

"Yeah, like when he to- Oh, Xander. You're back. Tell us. We wanna know," Willow switched tracks halfway through her sentence.

"Sure Wills. Here," he said while handing over the filled glass. "And now it's time for me to tell you about my angel."

"Angel? I thought it was a chick?"

"Not THAT Angel, thank you very much," Xander said with a horrified expression on his face. An expression that quickly changed to one of happy remembrance. "No, I'm thinking about my beautiful angel."

"Isn't he cute when he looks like that?" Faith asked the other girls.

"Which 'that' do you mean? The moment where he considered Angel, or his angel?" Buffy asked as she played along.

"Hey! Ix-nay on the Angel-nay."

"But you'd look so cute together. All manly and stuff."

This time the horrified expression on Xander's face was even funnier."Yuck! That's disgusting Faith."

While teasing him was fun, that wasn't what she wanted to do so Faith decided to cut him some slack. "Okay, enough fooling around. Let's get on with the story."

"I forgive you," X replied with a straight face, although she recognized the slight cracks in the mask that told her he was trying hard not to laugh.

That wouldn't do of course, there was nothing to forgive, so she threw a pillow at him. The same one that Buffy had thrown at her earlier in fact. "Oh shut up."

"I thought you wanted to hear this? I can stop you know."

"I don't, but Faith blackmailed us remember?" Buffy said while glaring at Xander, who wilted under that expression and recanted his statement.

"Alright, don't get your panties in a twist."

"Xander!" Buffy said, shocked that he would say something like that. Until she suddenly realized who must have influenced him to say something like that. "Faith!"

"I'm impressed X, I never thought you'd actually say that," Faith beamed. "You have learned well, my Padawan."

"Thank you master," he said with a mock bow. Playing along although he was obviously a bit ashamed that those words had slipped from his mouth. "Anyway, back to business. My beautiful angel."

"Yes, let's hear it."

"A long long time ago, in a Bronze not far away, I was sitting at a table waiting for my friends to arrive. Friends who for some reason were held up. Anyway, this all happened not long after that whole deal with what we thought was the Anointed One. So, there I was sitting. Waiting for my friends who didn't show up."

"You know X, if I didn't know better I'd think you're angry about the fact that they didn't show up."

"Hey, I was worried about my friends!" Xander explained. "Now then. While I was sitting there. Alone."

Faith could see B roll her eyes at the obvious theatrics of it, but they all remained quiet while Xander kept talking about how he had been sitting there for over an hour. Alone. Without his best friends. Who he had been worried about. "Okay X. Let's skip to the chick."

"And then suddenly," Xander said without skipping a beat, "she was there. The most beautiful vision of beauty that I've ever seen. A diamond hidden in the rubble. A rose among daisies. A-"

"Okay Xander, we get it. She was pretty," B interrupted. "Can we now get on with the story?"

"Am I telling this story, or you?" he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he continued. "Anyway, I couldn't look anywhere else when this creature of pure beauty walked into the Bronze. But then the most amazing thing of all happened: after looking around for a minute or so, she suddenly spotted me and walked straight at me. It was like a scene from a movie. There she was, looking like some kind of goddess, with the wind blowing her beautiful dark hair all around, and those tight clothes showing off her every asset."

"Xander?"

"What?" Xander asked when Willow interrupted him.

"There is no wind in the Bronze, so her hair couldn't have been blowing all around."

"Well, yeah, maybe," he hesitated. "That's how I remember it though, and I don't want anything like common sense or reality to interfere with my memories of that day, so please keep quiet."

Faith only smirked at that. If that was the kind of fantasies that the X-man had, it might be a good idea to invest in one of those small fans. Especially as it wasn't just hair that could be blown around. Thin cloth reacted to wind in a similar way, and could make for some very interesting times.

"Anyway. She walked over to my table, took a chair with all the grace that she exuded from every pore of her body, and said: 'Hey Xander.'"

"'Hey Xander?' You mean she knew who you were?"

Xander shrugged at that. "Yeah, I was kinda surprised myself. It isn't every day that some incredibly beautiful girl comes up to me like that. One that I don't know that is," he quickly added to the statement. Probably hoping they wouldn't take offense at that.

Not that she would, in fact she'd already dismissed it from her mind. Your first was usually special after all. Xander continued then. "Anyway, she needed some kind of help, and being the gentleman I am, I volunteered to help her. I can't really remember what it was about though. That's one of the things about that night that drives me crazy."

"Oh, so that's the reason," Faith decided to chime in.

"Very funny. Anyway, I think we went looking for some magical amulet. It was hidden by some vampires or demons or something. There was this whole complex plan that concerned her friends distracting the bad guys while we went looking. In the end we found it of course, and we brought it back to her friends. There's something off about that as well, but I can't remember what it is." Xander trailed off again, Looking a bit disconcerted.

"I know what you mean," Buffy spoke up. "I have a feeling that something happened around that time that I can't completely remember either. Almost as if I've lost some time there. Willow? Is it possible to change someone's memory with magic?"

Interesting question, although Faith had a feeling the answer would be yes. Something that was soon verified by Willow. "Theoretically, yes. I'm not sure how it would be done, but I've read that it's possible."

"Weird. Maybe the amulet thingie did something?"

"Whatever. I wanna hear about the interesting stuff," Faith said. "Come on X, continue with your description of the cherry popping."

"Could you possibly be more crude?" Buffy asked with an expression of distaste.

"Sure, but that's not the point, is it?" Faith teased before draining her glass of whiskey.

"Ladies! Before you attack each other, and fulfill one of my many fantasies, although without the mud or jelly, let's get this over with."

B obviously complied with the request, but made a demand first. "Okay Xander, but I want to talk about the whole memory thing later. I'm not sure why it's suddenly bothering me, but I want to find out what happened back then."

"Alright. Maybe we should discuss it with G-man though."

"Whatever," Faith said as she rolled her eyes. "Story. Sex. Now."

"Okay. Well, there isn't much left to tell actually. We delivered the amulet thing with her friends, and she told them she'd accompany me home but that she'd be back in time to get home. Why can't I remember what her friends looked like?"

Was he going to keep that up? "Questions later. Story now."

"Yeah, yeah. Now, instead of taking me home, she directed us towards the motel where she rented a room for the night, and when I woke up the next morning she was gone."

"A little light on details there, aren't we?"

"I don't kiss and tell Faith."

"Then skip the kissing part. That's not what I wanna hear anyway."

He sent her a glare for that. Not that she understood why. Wasn't the whole point of the story the part he'd just skipped? It wasn't like she cared about how beautiful the chick was, or how her hair blew in the wind or such romantic stuff. "Hey, what was the chick's name anyway?"

"I don't know," Xander admitted.

"You don't know? So you were seduced by a beautiful, mysterious, stranger? Damn X, that sounds like a corny script from a movie. Next thing you're gonna tell me is that she left one of her slippers or shit like that."

"She left you like that? And you didn't wake up?" Willow asked, attempting to steer the direction of the conversation elsewhere. Although she obviously had a bit of difficulty talking about the X-man's carnal adventures.

"I, ah, was a bit tired at the time."

"Now we're getting somewhere. She keep you up all night or something?"

"What did I say about kissing and telling?"

Faith chuckled at that. "I'll take that as a yes."

"Can you ever not think about sex?"

"I didn't hear you complain last night. In fact if I remember it right you were screaming for more."

Buffy got to her feet at that. "Right, and that's more than I wanted to hear."

"Oh, sit down B. X is now gonna tell us what the chick left for him."

Immediately Xander's face turned into a mask. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes you do Xander," Willow spoke up. "We've been talking about it, and you've always given hints about things. You were the first who knew that Angel was a vampire, and the whole curse thing. Oh, and remember when you warned Faith and Buffy about Allan? They might've hurt him or something if you hadn't said that."

"I still think we should have staked him."

"Oh come on Buffy, just because he's dating your mom doesn't make him evil."

"Oh right. Buffy's mom! You told her to have her head checked, which saved her life." Wow, Red was almost bouncing up and down. She hadn't accidentally had coffee or anything, had she? Thinking back, she couldn't remember Red drinking anything but juice so that wasn't it. Luckily Red's girl calmed her down before she got any worse.

"And every time we ask you about it you give some kind of weird answer that doesn't tell us anything. So come on, spill," Buffy added.

He remained stubborn however. "It's not my story to tell."

"The chick ain't here, lover, so it ain't gonna be her," she said while snuggling against him, and trailing her right hand over his body. Maybe a little personal persuasion like this would help.

"But I-I."

"And besides," B told X while pointing at the clock, "it's past midnight, which makes this the day that you promised to tell us."

"What?" he said, while turning to the clock with a surprised look. "Oh. Huh. I guess you're right. I mean it's not like everything actually came true."

"Tell us, X," Faith whispered in his ear, causing him to shiver.

"Like I said, we spent the night together and when I woke up she was gone. There was a letter though." At that moment he paused again.

"And? What did the letter say?" Willow asked, still a romantic at heart despite no longer actually interested in the X-man. Something Faith was pretty grateful for.

"It said that she'd been waiting for that moment for years and that she was very happy that it had actually happened. That she loved me, and couldn't wait for the moment that we could truly be together. It also mentioned that she didn't want me to forget her."

"Considering that the only fact stopping you from screaming her name when you come is that you don't know it, I'd say she pretty much succeeded," Faith snorted. She didn't have any problems with the fact that X still thought about the girl. Although she had to admit that the whole 'moment they could be together' thing didn't sit well with her. What if the chick returned? Who would X choose? She didn't want to lose him.

"In short the whole letter was about how she didn't want to leave, but didn't have a choice about it. Which made me feel a bit better about the whole thing. There was more to it though. On the other side of the letter was a list of stuff she thought that I should know. The thing with Angel was at the top, and that I should ask Jenny's uncle if the curse could be broken like that. There was quite a bit there, and some of it worked out, and other things didn't. She warned me that I should stake Spike after he'd been chipped, and that the Trio would come. Stuff like that.

"Other things didn't make any sense. Like the note that Ben was Glory. I still don't know who Ben is, or Glory, and, from what I can tell, that was supposed to happen before the Trio. Then there was some stuff about someone called Anya who I've never even heard of either. But, I don't think there's anything useful left in it. The only mentions left concern something called the First, but he hasn't shown up either. And now the whole thing is supposed to be over. Tomor- I mean today was mentioned in the letter as the day I could finally talk about it."

Okay, that was pretty freaky. "So, your chick knew the future?"

"Uh, yeah. Sorta. Although she missed quite a few things, like how that Terakan killed Kendra."

Right. That had been a bad thing, although Faith had to admit to herself that no matter how bad it had been, she didn't mind. If Kendra hadn't died, she wouldn't have become a Slayer and would probably be lying dead in some Boston gutter by now.

"Wow, what a rush," a new voice suddenly said, and turning around Faith noticed a new girl walking into the room.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Faith? When did you get here?" the girl asked in surprised reply. She then looked around the room a bit better, and when her eyes fell on Red's girl she froze in shock. "Tara? How?"

It was the way her boyfriend froze next to her that made Faith focus on him, and she was far from happy when she heard him whisper. "Angel." The recognition, and obvious longing, in Xander's voice almost tore her heart apart, but if the chick wanted to have her boyfriend she would have to fight for it. There was no way that she'd give up on the X-man.

While she was setting her priorities right, it was B who spoke up. "Okay, and who are you?"

That made the girl react again. "What do you mean? Who am I? It's me, Dawn."

"I don't know anyone named Dawn," B replied.

Once again the girl froze in shock until she suddenly whispered something that Faith could only hear because she was a Slayer. "Oh. Not good. So 'you can't tell people about the future' didn't mean I just couldn't talk about it out loud."


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Oh no. This was so not good. How could this have happened? Had she really messed up the time-line so bad that her own sister no longer even recognized her? Dawn was really starting to freak out now, and that was something she couldn't afford. She had to stay calm, cool, and able to think clearly. Her own sister didn't know who she was!

Calm, cool, and able to think clearly.

None of them recognized her!

Calm, cool, and able to think clearly.

What had gone wrong? How come they didn't know her?

Calm, cool, and able to think clearly.

"So, who the fuck are you really?"

That was Faith. Sitting there on the couch, next to Xander. Looking as if she belonged here. In her house. Well, hers and Buffy's actually, but still... Faith. It was obvious that she was different in this world as the last thing she'd heard about her Faith was that the rogue Slayer was still in jail. Her Faith? What if this was her Faith now? What if she couldn't fix what had gone wrong? No! She had to stay positive. She could do this. And there were things that were still the same. Faith still cursed, and Willow was holding the hand of a girl.

That it happened to be a girl who had died half a year earlier in her own world wasn't all that important of course. Nope. Not important. Oh god, she was really starting to freak out here, wasn't she? Wait a minute, if they didn't know who she was how come she still remembered the real world? And why hadn't the monks done their make-the-Key-human thing here? And how had this happened anyway? Shouldn't the others from the real world be here as well? Or had they appeared somewhere else? Maybe they would show up any moment now!

Turning to look at the door, Dawn wished for all she was worth that the door would open and show her sister and friends. She was even willing to see Spike right now. Okay, maybe not him. That wound was still a bit too fresh for her liking. How dare he do that? And why had Buffy kept that secret for all this time?

"I ask again, who the fuck are you?" Faith repeated her earlier question.

"Angel," that was Xander! Her love! She'd almost forgotten about him. What did he say? Oh, Angel! Was he here as well? As Xander was staring in her direction, she turned around to look, but couldn't see the souled vampire.

"Where?"

"You," Xander explained in a slightly dreamy voice. "You are my angel."

Oh. "Yeah, I'm from the moons of Iego."

"Ew, you do realize that was the worst of the whole bunch, don't you?"

Damn, some things obviously hadn't changed. Hold on a freaking minute here. Faith knew details about movies? And not just any movies either. "You've actually seen Star Wars?"

"X dragged me to it when that one was released," Faith shrugged. "And after that experience he forced me to watch the other three in an attempt to prove that they weren't all like that."

That wasn't fair! He was supposed to have gone with her. Okay, so maybe she hadn't existed at the time. It might even be true that in the real world she hadn't gone with him as that took place before the monks started messing around with her, but that didn't mean Faith was allowed to replace her!

"I don't care about movies," Buffy then spoke up. "I just want to know who you are, where you come from, and why you believe that you're allowed to be in this house."

"Buffy!" Xander said in a scandalized voice. "This is the girl I've been telling you about."

"The one you didn't know anything about? The one who according to herself has messed up the world-line, or whatever you want to call it? Someone who probably knows better than any of us what happened that night?"

"Oh, Willow's memory spell hasn't dissolved yet?" Dawn asked.

"M-memory spell? I would never do something like that! Youbelievemedon'tyouTara? I'dneverdothatIswearthatisthethruthandmaytheGoddesstakemypowersifI'mlying." Okay, Willow babble still existed as well. It was good to have something familiar around.

"I know honey, you'd never do anything like that."

Right. And Tara could know, after all she had been Willow's first victim. No. She shouldn't think about that. The two of seemed as close as they'd been before Willow's slip, and it was possible that it had never happened in this world. Maybe Willow hadn't come that close to the dark side of the force this time around? No, she should stop with the Star Wars metaphors. Just because he'd gone with Faith didn't mean she should keep on thinking about it.

"Oh, I didn't mean you. I meant the rea-, eh my Willow."

"You were gonna say the real Willow," Faith noted. "What? We're not real to you? Because trust me, X was pretty positive last night, and this morning, that I'm real."

No! It was even worse than she'd imagined! Faith was dating Xander! How could he do that to her? That sister-killing, Xander-stealing, bitch. "I was his first."

"Yeah, because of the time-travel thing. Tell me, who was his first in the, ah, 'real' world," Faith asked with a smirk, probably expecting to hear that it had been someone who wasn't named Dawn.

Which unfortunately was the case, but Dawn knew a bit more about that situation than Faith would wish for. "It was you. He saved you from a demon, you slept with him, kicked him out of bed, and tried to kill him shortly after."

Faith blanched at that, and turned a shocked expression at Xander. "Kill him? I'd never do that."

"Yeah well, I keep hearing that you wouldn't do this, and wouldn't do that. Trust me, you did. Right now you're in jail for murder."

"No," Faith shook her head in denial. "I don't believe you. You're only making that up. Unless you've got any proof, I don't want to hear shit like that."

Once again it was Buffy who had enough and spoke up. "Right, you come here, start accusing my friends of things we've never done, but we still don't know who you are. Fess up, or suffer the consequences."

"Buffy..."

"No. I gave you your choices. Speak up, or I'll throw you out on the street."

"But it's dark! There are vampires!"

"That won't be a problem if you tell me what I want to know, will it?"

With a sigh of frustration, Dawn took a chair from the table and sat down on it so that she could rest her arms on the backrest. An action that wasn't appreciated, and it was Willow who voiced the complaint. "Hey, I didn't hear Buffy say that you could sit down."

"I'm tired. I was busy the entire night, and I want to sit down while I'm being interrogated. Not that you're actually going to believe me or anything."

"Well, if it's an interrogation you want, you can have it. Xander? Do your soldier bit."

"I think I'll stay out of this Buff. I don't think she did anything wrong, and only made a mistake somewhere in getting back to where she belonged."

"And she screwed his brains out."

"And she- Hey! That's not nice Faith."

"Oh, but you like me when I'm not nice, don't you bad boy?" As the Slayer crawled all over Xander, who responded far too eagerly, Dawn had to look away or lose her lunch. How could he be dating her of all people? Even Anya was better than this.

"Yes mistress," Xander replied. An answer that Dawn found far too scary to even contemplate. Although... the idea of Xander being tied up, and at her mercy wasn't exactly one she minded. Licking her suddenly dry lips, she did her best to focus on the here and now. Where here and now was sitting in a chair, in the wrong time-line, being interrogated by her own sister. And where she shouldn't be thinking about a naked Xander, covered only by a few straps of leather, willing to obey her every command...

"Hey!"

"What?" she shook herself from that fantasy.

"I asked you a question."

"You did?" When did that happen?

"What's your last name, Dawn," Buffy demanded while the others all looked at her with inquisitive looks. Except for Faith, who smirked at her and looked like the cat that ate the canary. She'd never really liked that expression, and she was going to show Faith that it wasn't any better to pick on Dawn than on Tweety.

After this question at least. Because this one was kinda hard to explain. "You won't believe me."

"Try me."

Okay. One last deep sigh, and she'd give the answer. Maybe another sigh, and a swallow, and another moment of hesitation. "Are you going to answer the question anytime today, or should I open the door for B?"

That did it, and she bit out the answer. "Summers. My name is Dawn Summers."

Shocked silence greeted that answer and the confusion could easily be read of all the faces around her. Buffy even went so far that she sat down for the first time since Dawn had entered the room. Unfortunately, it was the wrong person who spoke up first. "Damn B, you never told us you have a sister."

"Bu-," Buffy started before clearing her head with a vigorous shake. "She can't be my sister, Faith. Perhaps she's some distant relative I've never heard of, or she just happens to have the same name, or she could be lying."

"Faith was right," Dawn admitted with pain in her heart. This time not only because her competitor for Xander's love had been right, but mostly because her sister, her own sister, was trying to explain the situation in such a way that they weren't directly related.

"That's impossible," Willow spoke up. "You've only traveled back in time six years, right? And you're older than that. I think you're lying."

So, Willow didn't believe her either. "Okay, I say that if she doesn't tell the truth any time soon we'll throw her out." And Faith obviously didn't believe her either. Not that that was a surprise.

"I'm not lying." And she wasn't going to cry either. Crying wouldn't help anything, and it would only show a weakness she couldn't afford right now. While surrounded by her own family and friends. God, she had really messed this up, hadn't she?

"Right. I mean, it makes sense and all. After all, little sisters regularly show up while they're already half-grown. That kind of thing happens everyday. It's almost as common as, let me think. Oh yeah, me becoming a nun," Faith again. What did she have against her? Okay, there was the whole thing with Xander who was still staring at her with something close to a love-struck expression. Which was nice. Very nice actually. No, more than that, it was wonderful. Of course, Faith was practically sitting in his lap at the moment, and clearly marking her territory, but Dawn didn't care about any of that right now.

She just wanted things to go back to the way they were. Back to where her friends and sister actually knew who she was. Her eyes were pricking, and she closed them for a moment to prevent tears from falling. She wanted things back to the way they were supposed to be. Not this weird version that didn't make any sense to her.

"Aww, the little girl is crying," Faith mocked, an action that wasn't even appreciated by the others. Was she so unsure that she needed to trample Dawn into the ground completely? No matter what the reason behind it was though, it did have an effect on Dawn. Maybe not the one that Faith had expected, but Faith didn't know that she had survived the deaths of her mother and sister, been the target of a murderous goddess, and had been threatened by far more dangerous beings than a nice Faith.

Even if the Faith in question wasn't being all that nice at the moment.

"I can deal. I know that this is hard to believe, heck I even said so when I started, but I am telling the truth. It's just a bit more complicated than you know."

"Dazzle us with your story then," Buffy commanded. Well, she might not be general Buffy here, but she could still act like it.

"I'm not-" Dawn stopped as she considered again what she was going to tell them. Could she trust these people with this knowledge?

Hold on, why was she doubting that? This was her own sister she was thinking about. Her sister and their friends. And Faith. But Faith was good here, and not doing anything more evil than stealing Xander.

"You're not what?"

Right. Take two. "I'm not entirely human."

"Not entirely human, how?" Willow asked, now sounding more curious than angry.

Faith was an entirely different matter though. "Damn X, I knew that you dating someone normal was too much, but I had expected that she'd at least been human. That makes what? Three out of three?"

"Cordy was completely human!"

"Really? I always thought she was a harpy in disguise," Faith mused with what even Dawn recognized as a teasing grin. The two of them really were a couple, weren't they? They even had the whole lovingly teasing stuff down pat.

"You know better than that," Xander said while starting to tickle Faith, who was far more susceptible to it than Dawn had expected.

"Eh, guys?" Buffy interrupted the love-fest. "Aside from the fact that I really have no wish to see this turn into one of your bedroom sessions, you do know that we have a potentially dangerous visitor here?"

"Hey! I'm not dangerous! And when did you start using words like potentially anyway? That's more like Gilesspeak, or even Willowspeak."

"You know Giles?"

"To quote Cordelia. Well duh!"

"And Cordelia as well," Tara spoke up for the first time. "Her aura is a lot like yours, Buffy. She has suffered a lot of pain, but I think she's telling the truth about being your sister."

"Pain as in pain, or pain as in, ehm, pain?" Buffy asked in a way that reminded Dawn of her own sister. Well, the version of her sister she was used to dealing with. How did you talk about people from a different time-line?

"Both, she has suffered emotional pain, and physical as well."

"Alright. So, she might be telling the truth about being my sister. What's with the whole not really human thing then?"

Yes, Dawn wanted to hear this as well. Her Tara had never recognized her as anything but human, but maybe this one was better at reading auras. She'd had more time to practice at least.

"I don't know. I can't see anything about her that tells me she isn't completely human."

"Well, that leaves only one person who can tell us that. Why don't you go on then, sister."

The venomous way Buffy said the word sister made Dawn flinch, but she continued her story nonetheless. "Once upon a time there was an energy called the Key that could be used to open the gateways between different dimensions. One day this Key was captured, or something, by some monks. I think they called themselves the Order of Dagon, but I'm not sure. Anyway, there was this hell-goddess who had been exiled to Earth and knew that the only way back was by using the Key.

"In an attempt to save the Key, and prevent the destruction of humanity that would happen if it was used, they sent it to the one place they thought it would be safe. They sent it to the Slayer, or one of them at least. But because they couldn't be sure that the Slayer would protect the Key, they turned it into the one thing that the Slayer would protect above all others. They created a young girl, a sister for the Slayer, and gave everybody around her false memories."

"And you're this Key," Willow asked after a short silence had fallen.

"Yes."

"So, did it work? Were you kept safe from the goddess?"

"No, in the end Glory found me, and-"

"Glory? As in Ben and Glory? The thing you wrote on that note?" Xander interrupted.

Huh? Oh yeah, the note thing. The whole damn reason for her being in this situation in the first place. "Yes. Glory had an alter-ego, but if you saw the change you couldn't remember it. Only Spike could once he'd seen it."

"Spike? The vampire? But you wanted me to stake him!"

"You did? And yes, I wanted you to," Dawn quickly confirmed. "He did something that I can't forgive, and I'm glad you staked him before he could. He tried to betray us several times, although we were too smart for him."

"If he betrayed you like that, why did you keep him around? I take it this happened after he was neutered, right?" Buffy wanted to know.

"You wanted it. First because he gave you information, then because he helped you, and then because..." No, better not go there. No matter how much she'd had her own silly crush on the vampire, the thought of him and Buffy was still... yuck! She shivered at the thought.

"Because?" Buffy asked for further information.

"It doesn't matter. Be happy it never happened here."

"Sure, we'll come back it later though. Why would I have left a soulless creature live?" The last part was obviously not meant for Dawn's ears, but Buffy hadn't whispered as softly as she should have.

"Let's go back to the part where you claim to be some kind of super-energy, capable of destroying the world," Faith steered the conversation back to her earlier story. "'Cause I have my doubts about that whole thing."

"I'm telling the truth!"

"Sure you are, kid, but that doesn't mean I believe you. Blondie?"

"She's telling the truth," Tara confirmed what Dawn already knew. But, Blondie? What kind of nick-name was that? It didn't sound very Faith-ish.

"Huh, imagine that. The kid is telling the truth."

"Yeah, and you can cut the kid stuff out. Ask Xander, I wasn't very kid-like five hours ago. Ehm, five hours my time. I think. What is the date anyway?"

Before Faith had a chance to comment on the Xander part, Tara answered Dawn's question. "The twelfth of February."

"Right. And the year?"

"2003."

"And Willow's spell still hasn't worn off? Wow, that was a pretty damn good job then."

"Could we not call it 'Willow's spell'? I wouldn't mess with anyone's memories like that, and I'd really appreciate it if you didn't constantly say I did."

Uhm, but she had. "It's the most accurate name, you know."

"How about 'other Willow's spell' then? That'd be something I can live with."

"How about 'real Willow's spell'," Dawn shot back.

That shut her up. Not that Dawn felt any pleasure from doing that, she liked Willow after all, but she was starting to get a headache from having to explain all this stuff. Unfortunately, she needed them to set things right.

"Cut that out, Dawn," Buffy commanded in an eerie reminder that despite all the differences, this was still her own sister. The sister she loved more than anyone else alive. With the possible exception of Xander.

"Yes Buffy," the response was as automatic as ever, and with the same meaning, although Buffy didn't know that. Hey, that could actually be interesting here. This Buffy didn't know that she'd only follow one of those commands if Buffy was around to enforce it. In all other cases she would simply disregard it. Not that it would be very useful or anything as this Buffy didn't trust her. Not that Buffy believed her or anything, but...

Wow, Dawn blinked as she considered her own thoughts. This was kinda weird. She really had to find a good way to keep the different Buffys, Willows, and future husbands separate in her mind. Faith and Tara weren't that big of a problem, but the others were people she'd spoken to only hours ago. When they still knew her.

"Good. Now, why don't you tell us a bit more about this whole Glory thing. You said she was some kind of goddess? How did the other usses defeat her?"

Oh great. Well, nothing to it. "It all started when you, I mean the other you, found one of the monks tied up in a warehouse." As she continued on with the whole sorry tale, Dawn felt as if they were starting to believe that she was telling the truth. Which was very much of the good.

There were some shocked expressions during the story, and an occasional glance in Xander's direction, but on the whole they took it pretty much in stride. Had they managed to save her mother's life? Her tumor had been one of the things she'd made sure to include on the note, but she hadn't seen her mother yet. And she had usually been at home around this time. Dawn desperately wanted to know, but fearing the answer she refrained from asking.

"I died," Buffy said in shock once Dawn had reached the end of her story.

"You saved the world."

"But you weren't surprised to see me, why?"

"You were resurrected," Dawn admitted.

"Like they wanted to do with the Master?"

Shaking her head in denial, Dawn tried to explain a bit more of what she understood about it. "No, it was a bit different. Willow, the other Willow, did some kind of spell because you'd died of magical means."

"Magical means? I fell off a tower, that sounds more like an overdose of gravity to me."

"I don't know, alright? I don't know exactly what Willow did, or why you could be called back, but mom couldn't." Squashing the need to cry once again, Dawn hoped that they would at least use this opening to start about her mother, but that hope was in vain.

By then Buffy had enough of it. "Okay, let's skip the ghoulish talk then. Let's get back to the important stuff. We now know who you are and what you are, but I still don't have a clue about where you come from."

"Or why you traveled through time," Willow added.

"That's what I meant."

"I know, but I wanted to make it clearer."

As all faces once again turned to her, Dawn wondered how she could explain this. She tried remaining quiet for a while, but for once the others didn't try to fill up the silence. Damn, she wouldn't even have minded it if Faith had tried to claim Xander again. The silence endured however, and in the end she saw no other way than to actually tell the story. "Alright. After the First had killed most of the potentials."

"Who's the First? And why would he kill the potentials? How could he do that anyway? Aren't they protected by the Council?"

"You haven't encountered the First Evil?" Dawn asked Willow surprised.

Willow only shook her head at that, before turning to the others who confirmed it. "Never even heard of it."

"Ehm, okay. The First Evil is like this super-evil, immortal, untouchable, unkillable, thing who can look like anyone who has ever died. It uses Bringers to carry out its commands, but I think it also has some champions or something."

"Untouchable, as in the movie, or as in you can't touch him?"

Movie? Whatever. "As in you can't touch him."

"Kinda like me when Ethan did his thing during Halloween?"

Ehm, what had Willow gone as again? Buffy had been the noblewoman, which had been great for jokes, and Xander had been the cool soldier guy... Oh, a ghost. "Yeah, kinda like that. Except that he doesn't look like himself."

"But it couldn't touch anything?" Faith asked.

"No."

"Then what was so bad about it? Those Bringers?"

"And the way it could control people."

"If you say so," Buffy asked, although the doubt in her voice was clearly audible. Not surprising as the First didn't sound nearly as evil when you had never fought it.

"Anyway," Dawn started again. "A couple of days ago, or rather what was a couple of days ago before everything happened, we found out that we could use some kind of amulet to close the Hellmouth. The only problem was that it wasn't anymore where it was supposed to be. But we did know when it had been there." Taking a deep breath she then told them how it all began.

….…

"What use is that thing if we don't know where it is?" Buffy raged in disappointment after she and Spike had returned empty-handed from the crypt.

"Are you sure that you looked in the right place," Xander asked.

"Yes, I'm sure. There aren't that many tombs left in Sunnydale from which we haven't taken one thing or another. And besides, I looked where Clem said it would be." Buffy really was pretty pissed, and Dawn decided that silence might be the best course of action for the moment.

"I take it then, that you saw no signs of it at all?" Giles asked. He obviously didn't mind invoking Buffy's wrath. Well, he wasn't her little sister, now was he? Okay, so she usually didn't really mind either, but Buffy was still a bit angry about what she'd said yesterday. Which she still thought was pretty unfair.

"No. No sign at all," Buffy said while sinking into a chair. "If it was there it's been gone for years. Are you sure we even need this thing? Isn't there some other way we can do the same thing? Willow, can't you do it?"

Willow shook her head in denial. "No, the medallion is made for closing the Hellmouth, and if I tried without it we might risk opening it even further. I'd need the amulet as a focus, and the magic is too dark as well. I'm not sure if I could handle that right now."

Right. So, even if Willow would manage to close the Hellmouth, it might mean a return of Darth Willow, the black-eyed superwitch. How about no? Wasn't there a saying concerning a disease, a cure, and which one was worse? Well, in Dawn's opinion this obviously fit the bill.

"Okay, I think we'll skip that part then. Where could it be then?"

"We could always ask around. I'm sure that if we hit them hard enough the local demons should be able to point us in the right direction," Spike offered.

Yeah right. Violence was gonna work in this case. This time Dawn had to restrain the urge to roll her eyes. That was always the solution for Buffy and Spike. Okay, so it usually worked, but that wasn't the point here. There were better ways to find things out, and they usually gave more reliable information as well.

"I think that doing so would merely inform the First what we're looking for, and allow it a chance to stop us before we can carry it out."

"So, that's out too," Buffy sighed. "Which means we're back to searching, but where? Isn't it for sale somewhere? Then we could simply pay for it and be done."

"Oh no," Anya spoke up, briefly paying attention now that it concerned money. "I already asked around, but none of my suppliers have even heard of it. Are you sure that it even exists?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Clem said it did, and Giles found it in one of his books, didn't he?"

"Well, yes," Anya conceded, "but that could be misdirection from the First, couldn't it? I mean, if it really wanted to do this, it easily could. It's not like it hasn't had the time to do so."

By this time Dawn couldn't keep quiet anymore, and repeated what she'd said the day before. "Why would it matter to the First anyway? Isn't he a far bigger bad than any we've seen before? Just because all the others wanted to open the Hellmouth, doesn't mean he wants to do that too."

"Dawn! We've been over this already. The First wants to destroy the Slayers, and then open the Hellmouth. If it can't do the second thing there is no need to kill us and he could go home. If he still wants to do that we at least only need to pay attention to the First, and not the Hellmouth as well. We'd win either way."

"If you could find it."

"Of course we'll find it. It's just not where we thought it would be."

"Well, I still think it's a trap. What's next? Some kind of ancient super weapon that only Slayers can use? Yeah, and the First will cut it out from the rocks for us as well."

"That would be pretty cool," Buffy smiled.

She still didn't get it, did she? "Right, and where would that weapon come from? Hello? Nobody who lived here more than 500 years ago even used metal. Which means that the weapon would be wood or bone. Even if it hadn't rotted away that would only be any be good against vampires, but not against demons."

"It might be made of some magical stuff, and even if it wasn't it would at least work against the Turok-Han."

"That's not the point! How do we know that the First isn't just messing with us here? Maybe instead of closing the Hellmouth it opens it. In the best case it's a distraction like Anya said."

"Don't worry about it, little bit. We know what we're doing. The bloody First doesn't stand a chance against us."

Dawn felt like screaming at that. They weren't even listening to her! Okay, the weapon thing was kinda ridiculous, and she had no idea how she'd come up with it, but the idea was there. The First was so much older than them, and would live forever. It wasn't like all the other people they'd faced. Someone who was that old and powerful would be patient, and willing to wait another twenty, fifty, or even hundreds of years to get what it wanted.

"She could be right though," Xander offered, immediately earning Dawn's eternal gratitude.

"Now you think I can't recognize a trap either?" Buffy asked him.

"You know it's not like that," Dawn heard her future husband say, "but there could be some truth in what she says as well. We still don't really know what the First's plan is."

"I told you that we do. It wants to kill me, and the potentials." That last part was said while she waved her hand in the direction of said girls.

"And Faith."

"Probably, if he hasn't already got her working for him."

"Buffy!" Giles interrupted.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. She's on the whole redemption kick, and Angel says she's being good now. I believe that. Anyway as we do know the First's plan, we should try to stop it from happening."

Okay, Dawn admitted that she was more than willing to stop the First from killing her sister, but that seemed such a limited plan for such a great evil. What was so bad about destroying the Slayer-line? Aside from the obvious of course.

….…

"So, you were like the great person who just happened to know everything that was wrong? The supergirl who knows everything about everything? Not that you can't tell an interesting story or anything, because you're not doing too bad for a kid, but it kinda looks like you're trying to show off. Everybody except you was stupid, oh and X wasn't too bad either as he was allowed to agree with you."

Glaring at Faith, Dawn tried to explain. "Look, it was different than here. I'm not saying I was all that great myself, but mistakes had been made before. Not all of the potentials di-" No, she cut herself off. While she might not have agreed with every decision her sister had made, she also didn't want to tell these other versions of her sister and friends—could this get any more confusing?—about that. There was no reason for them to know everything, and it would only make them want to help her less.

"All I'm saying," she tried again, "is that some things were different back then, there, whatever. It's like vamp-Willow."

"Vamp-Willow?" Buffy asked.

Oh god, they'd missed that too. A quick look at Willow showed someone who was doing her best not to hyperventilate, and Dawn knew that if she let this go on she'd have to explain that sorry situation as well. Hadn't these people encountered anything bad? "That's something that happened on my world, but it's not important right now."

"I think it is," Tara spoke up while trying to calm down her girlfriend. "You can't just say things like that and not explain them to us."

"But-" Dawn started, but never finished as Buffy interrupted.

"She's right."

Great. Looking around, Dawn noticed that everybody present had a look of expectation on their face, and agreed that she should explain that comment. "Oh, alright. When Cordelia walked in on Willow and Xander swapping spit she got angry. A couple of days later a vengeance demon named Anyanka allowed her to make a wish. I don't have a clue what it was about, but not too long after Anyanka asked Willow to help her get back her power center, but instead they got a vampire version of Willow. She was staked, and everybody lived happily ever after. The End."

"Why would I help a demon?" Willow wanted to know.

"You didn't know she was a demon, and she lied when she asked you for help in a spell." No need to explain the whole situation with Anya to them. That would only complicate things even more. "Now, can I continue with the story, or are you going to interrupt again?"

"Depends, will you be super-Dawn again, or are you going to tell a more realistic version?" Faith asked.

Rolling her eyes at that comment, Dawn didn't even bother to answer. "Alright, where was I?"

….…

"If it can really close the Hellmouth we need that amulet. The only problem we have in that regard is that we don't know where it is," Buffy explained the situation once again.

"Do we have any ideas where it could be?"

"No, not really. Anybody could have gotten it since it was last seen."

"But it was in that crypt?"

"According to Clem, yes."

Xander spoke up next. "And that was about six years ago."

"Yes," Buffy sighed.

"Could the mayor have gotten it?" Dawn was the next to ask. That was after all a good possibility. He had been very powerful, and wouldn't have wanted anyone to interfere with his Ascension.

"Yes, but so could any of the other baddies we've fought. Which pretty much sucks."

"But why would they want it? The mayor at least could use it. Deadboy didn't have it, or we would have known about it, ADAM wasn't exactly the type for that kind of stuff, Glory wouldn't care, and neither did the Trio. Right Andrew?"

"We didn't have it. If we had it would have been pretty sweet though. A powerful amulet like that would have been pretty useful, and there are a lot of things we could have done with it."

Dawn spoke up again in an attempt to prove that Xander was right. "That's right, and if anyone else had taken it we would have known about it. I don't think anyone would actually keep quiet about it."

"Really? And here I was wondering how something that powerful could have stayed hidden in some crypt for all these years. If they could keep quiet about it for so long why would they stop now?"

"Because they're not the same people?"

"How do you know?" Willow pointed out. "Maybe they just stored it there for a while and then came back for it."

"As if you believe that yourself," Dawn scoffed.

"That's not the point is it? We simply don't know what happened to the amulet. For all we know it's kept in a vault at Wolfram & Hart. And just in case you'll propose that we break into their vault, that is the closest thing to impossible." Willow said.

Settling back on the couch, Dawn stifled the words that Willow had predicted so accurately and simply pouted.

"Okay, so we don't know where it is now, but we do know where it was then. Too bad we can't travel back in time," Xander sighed.

"Yeah," Buffy agreed with her own sigh.

….…

"At least this part was slightly better. While you were still obviously the one without whom everybody would've been lost there wasn't quite as much focus on your own greatness, and even a small slip. So, are you gonna tell us anytime soon how you're the one who came up with the idea to travel in time?" Faith asked.

"I didn't come up with it," Dawn told her a bit reluctantly. So what if she spiced up the story a bit? It didn't hurt anyone, did it? "We spent a couple of days looking for the amulet before Willow came across a possible way to travel through time in a book."

"I did?" Willow asked in surprise.

"Hell Red, who else could do something like that? I kinda figured it would be you."

"But why do you keep asking Dawn if she's going to tell us that it was her?"

Okay, so Willow was still as smart as she'd been in the real world, but could also be just as obtuse at times. Although in this case it was probably more a case of being innocent. "She's scared. She thinks that I'll take Xander from her. I must admit that's pretty new: an insecure Faith."

"I'm not insecure," Faith immediately responded. "Besides, X has a real woman now. He doesn't need a little girl like you."

"Like I said: insecure," Dawn said with a slightly mocking smile. Not that she was actually as confident as she tried to pretend. Far from it even. She could feel her heart beating wildly in her throat and wanted nothing more than to run away from this confrontation. This was Faith she was talking to, and the memories of what the Slayer had done back in the real world were far too clear in her mind.

"Insecure huh?" The smile that suddenly appeared on Faith's face was far from reassuring, and made Dawn wonder if Faith was finally going to snap. Surely Buffy would help if Faith tried to hurt her? Buffy was a hero after all, she wouldn't allow something like that.

Physically hurting her wasn't what Faith had in mind though. Instead she straddled Xander's legs and, taking his head in her hands, she pressed her lips to his. While any details were obscured from sight, it was obvious from the sounds that they were both enjoying it.

To Dawn it felt like she was watching a train-wreck, or maybe a car accident. Something that you really didn't want to see, but simply couldn't turn away from because it was too fascinating in all its horror. It wasn't long before the hands of the two started to wander as well. Faith was the first, and as Dawn watched the Slayer slip one of her hands underneath Xander's sweater, and the other reach down between them, she couldn't help but remember how it had felt when she'd done that herself.

….…

"I thought you were supposed to take me home? Isn't that what your friends said?"

"Considering they also put a spell on you to ensure that by tomorrow you can't remember what happened tonight, do you really care what they think?"

Xander shrugged at that. "Well, it makes sense. They didn't remember what had happened, and as they are us that means we can't remember. You know, the whole Prime Directive thing."

"I never liked Star Trek, so I don't care about that."

"Well sure, it wasn't as good as Babylon 5, but-"

She silenced him by pressing him against the wall. "Let's not talk about that, shall we? I really don't care about science fiction series right now, and there are far more interesting things to do."

Xander was so surprised by this sudden action that he didn't even struggle. "What are you-"

This time she silenced him with a kiss. Grabbing his head, she yanked it down—gently and lovingly of course—and pressed her lips against his to finally find out what that felt like.

It was heaven.

There was no other possible description for it. All her dreams came true at that one single moment in time, and even while she was lost in her own passion Dawn felt that Xander was starting to respond.

Finally, after several long, yet far too short, minutes Dawn realized that the lack of air indicated that it would probably be a good idea to take a breather. She didn't want to though, and when she finally let go she spent a long time catching her breath. Well long as in a long time that she was unable to continue. Still panting, she spoke to the boy she'd long ago decided would be the father of her children. "Wasn't that much better than talking about science fiction?"

"Yeah," Xander said in a slightly dazed voice. "That was-"

"We're made for each other. You may not recognize it just yet, but we will end up together."

"But the other me-"

Placing a finger on his mouth—something he responded to by kissing it—she silenced him again. "The other you has to wait until I'm legal. Until that time he keeps himself occupied with Anya. They aren't together by the way. They broke up some time ago." There was no need to confuse the boy with more details than that. And as it was basically the truth, at least the way she saw it, she hadn't lied to him either.

"They looked close though," Xander noted.

"They are, but so were all the others. Do you know how lucky you are by the way?"

Xander looked confused at that. "What do you mean, lucky?"

"You're a minor yourself. That means there's nothing illegal about what we can do. And even if there was, I wouldn't be here tomorrow so there's nothing wrong about it."

His eyes widened at the realization of what she meant. "You mean?"

"Oh yes," she smiled. "Tonight, all our dreams are going to come true."

"But-"

"No buts," Dawn stopped his protest before it formed. "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I have no intention of wasting it."

"Won't the others leave soon?"

"They can't leave without me."

"What do you mean?" Xander asked.

Once again Dawn kissed him. This time letting her hand slip underneath his shirt, and trailing it over his back. There was no way that he would stop her from doing this. She'd been dreaming about something like this for years, and now that she had the chance to actually do it nothing was going to stop her. Nothing.

Pressing her body against his, she clearly felt his reaction to her. She had no idea how much of this he'd remember in the future. Perhaps he'd think it was only a dream, after all he'd never talked about it, but if that was how he would remember it she'd make sure it was the best dream he'd ever have.

This time when they separated, he raised a point that probably seemed pretty important to him. "I don't even know your name."

"Does it matter?" she asked, before once again making a play for his delicious lips.

Curling her leg around his, Dawn did her best to meld with Xander, and she couldn't stop a grin from forming on her lips when his hands started to return the favor she'd been bestowing on him all along. They trailed along her back, and everywhere they touched she could feel her skin react. It was pretty hot here, wasn't it?

Not nearly hot enough though, and moving her own hands to his chest she waited for him to do the same. He did. Letting out a loud moan, Dawn made no attempt to hide the pleasure she felt as Xander's inexperienced hand cupped her breast.

He reacted to that sound by stopping his actions, and she was forced to order him to continue. This was going to be her night. Well, and Xander's night as well ,even if he wasn't going to remember it for quite some years. But once he did, she would convince him that they had to continue where they'd left off.

Thinking about stopping, why was he no longer kneading her breast? Or returning her kisses her for that matter? Stepping back she was about to ask for an explanation when she noticed him looking behind her. Not a vampire! Please, don't let it be a vampire! With great reluctance, Dawn turned around and was relieved when she noted that it wasn't a vampire who'd walked in on them.

Not that Kennedy and Rhona were much better right now, but they could at the very least be intimidated. "Go away you two, we're busy here."

"Everybody is looking for you. Buffy and the others want to go home."

"Well, go look somewhere else. I'm not done here yet, and won't be for several hours." Turning to Xander, she then asked a question that had the desired result of making him blush. "You can last that long, can't you?"

"Wha- I-I. Ehm, Sure, I think." Ah, wasn't that cute? Too think she could make Xander blush like a little girl because of talk about sex. Of course, the only reason she could even say something like that was because of Anya's influence. When you regularly were around someone who could, and constantly did, tell you exactly how many orgasms she'd had on any particular day there wasn't much that could faze you.

Too bad that the Xander from her time had lost that cute touch. On the other hand, that Xander did have the years of experience that Anya had given him. That thought made even her blush as she considered the possibilities. She had to convince Willow that she should lift the memory spells from them all, and then she and Xander could go to some nice, quiet, out of the way, hotel where they wouldn't leave their room for a week.

Was it bad to be thinking about the other Xander while seducing this one? Nah, they were the same person after all. The only difference would be experience, and if she practiced a lot tonight she wouldn't be totally inexperienced either once they got together for real.

"So Anya was right," Rhona said.

"What?"

"Well, she said that the only reason you wanted to take Xander home alone was so that you two could have sex."

That didn't quite sound like Anya. "She said that?"

"Well no," Kennedy spoke up. "What she actually said was something like that you were going to get a lot of orgasms, but that she was alright with it because this happened before she'd started dating Xander. She did add that if you'd do it while the two of them were dating that she'd make sure you'd regret it for the rest of your short life."

"Oh, okay." Like that mattered. They had gone back in time to several years before Anya showed up, and she had no intention of living through everything that had happened again. So, it was time for Xander again. "Now go."

The potentials shook their heads though, and it was Rhona who explained. "We can't lie to Buffy, she'd be really pissed off about that."

Okay, this could be a problem. But for every problem there was a solution. "Kennedy, if you let me do what I want, and tell Buffy that the two of you didn't see me, I'll help you with Willow. I'll be back within a couple of hours, and we'll be able to go home."

It wasn't long before Kennedy's decision was made, and she started dragging a more reluctant Rhona away from the scene. With a large, and hopefully not too predatory, grin on her face, Dawn turned back to Xander who looked at her in an expression close to surprise. "Willow?"

"Oh, she's gay now."

"Really?" As his eyes started to glaze due to the fact that he'd just heard that one of his best friends probably did things on a regular basis that were very much part of his best dreams, Dawn quickly put a stop to it.

"Don't you dare fantasize about that! You're dealing with me now."

"Oh yeah, right. Of course." Xander blinked, before he suddenly thought of another question. "Have you and Willow ever eh..."

"I don't do women, I'm a strictly one-Xander girl."

"Oh, that's a sh- good. That's good. Yes, very good. I mean, I wouldn't want to have any fantasies about you and Willow, Buffy, or even Cordelia. That would be so wrong. Oh, and so would it be with Miss Calendar, or- I'll shut up now."

Despite the fact that it was probably normal for a guy to think like that, Dawn wasn't happy at all. He should be thinking about her, and her alone. The thing with mentioning Buffy she could just about forgive because he didn't know they were sisters—not that she was entirely sure that wouldn't have fueled his fantasies even more—but he had been thinking about other girls while he was with her.

Well, there was only one solution for that. Stepping closer to him again, she did something she'd never expected she'd ever do—at least not in public. With one hand she grabbed his hair and pulled his head closer to her own, while slipping her other hand in the front of his jeans, and whispered in his ear. "The motel is two blocks from here. Do you want to be thinking about fantasies that will never happen, or would you prefer to find out what the real thing feels like?"

….…

"Faith! Xander! Don't you dare do that here! This is not your bedroom, and you'd better keep your hands where they belong before I cut them off!" Buffy's shout made Dawn once again aware of her current situation, and blinking for a moment she realized that Faith and Xander hadn't stopped what they'd been doing. Not that they seemed to have progressed very far, but that was very much alright with her.

Xander was hers, and nobody else was allowed to have him now that she'd come to claim him. Okay, technically she hadn't come to claim this one, but that didn't matter. He belonged to her. There was no way that she'd surrender the father of her future children to Faith, no matter how different she might be.

Her decision made, Dawn gathered her courage, got up from her chair, and walked over to the couch where Faith and Xander were doing their thing. As her guards were focused on them, nobody noticed her until she reached the couch. Which was when the protests started. "Hey! What do you think you're doing!"

That one had been Buffy; she hadn't even heard what Willow said, but it didn't matter. She had reached her goal. As the two lovebirds were still fully dressed they obviously weren't as far gone as her sister believed. Still, she agreed with Buffy that they should stop.

So, she made them stop.

"My turn," Dawn said while pushing Faith to the side. A move that was only possible due to the precarious position the Slayer had been in. Faith fell to the side, rolled of the couch, and was on her feet before Dawn had actually done anything more than lower herself a little in an attempt to take over Faith's former position. After all, now the time had come for Xander to be ravaged the way he was meant to ravaged: by her.

A sharp pain, and pressure, at the back of her head ensured that she didn't resist the way her head was pulled back though. "I don't think so kid. He's mine. Now go back to your chair like the little girl you are, and you can tell us some more about why you're here."

"But-"

"I don't know what you thought you could achieve with this little stunt, but it failed." Well, now that she thought about it, she wasn't exactly sure what she wanted to achieve either. Kissing Xander was of course a good thing, but she had obviously picked the wrong time to try it. Still, Dawn was pretty sure that, if Faith hadn't interrupted, Xander would be halfway through to being hers.

"But-"

"If you're going to sit and talk pretty I might possibly forgive you for this stunt. Most likely this will happen on the same day that hell freezes over, or pigs fly, but there is a chance."

"But-" This was humiliating! Faith was directing her around by simply holding her hair in a grip that hurt like hell if she tried anything other than following Faith's precise instructions. For a moment she considered resisting this treatment, but luckily she came back to the real world before she tried that. Resist a Slayer, yeah right. And even if she'd managed to defeat Faith—a one in a billion chance—she would still have to face a second Slayer and a pair of witches before she reached Xander again.

Why couldn't this be simple?

"Sit," Faith directed her once they'd reached her chair.

"But-"

Faith only held up a single finger in warning, but the intention was obvious. She wasn't allowed to protest: all she should do was answer questions. "Sit and talk pretty. Nothing else, or you'll have to be spanked."

Spanked! Xander... Oh, wouldn't that be fun? Faith must have realized why she suddenly became so quiet, and ruined the mood completely. "By your sister."

"Ew, that's gross."

"Yes Faith, that is gross," Buffy agreed.

"What is gross?" a voice suddenly came from the hallway. A voice that Dawn didn't recognize at all. A male voice. That didn't sound like Giles, or even Wood. Who was this?

When the man finally came out of the hallway, Dawn ignored him completely as her focus was on the woman with him. The woman without whom she would never have existed. Technically that might not be entirely correct, but to her that's what it felt like. Could this be real?

"Hello, who are you?"

She ignored the man as he asked the question. Just like she ignored Faith, who might or might not be still trying to get her back in the chair. She stood on trembling legs, hoping beyond hope that she wouldn't hear certain words coming from the blond woman.

The words came though, and once again Dawn felt like her world collapsed. The tears that she had kept inside the entire time—hidden by the mask of sex-crazed girl—started to flow at the same time that she fell back on the chair. "Who I am?"

"Are you alright, dear?" She hadn't thought it was possible, but the sincere concern hurt even more than the question had.

"I'm fine, mom," Dawn tried to smile through her tears. "I just wish my own family remembered who I am."

* * *

Post-fic comments:  
I forgot to mention this in the previous chapter, but after this one there are three more chapters that will be posted once a week, on Sunday. 

Marie Nomad: Thank you for your comments. I hope this chapter showed you the reactions you hoped for. And if not, theres more to come :-)

Darklight: Thank you.

Vandrvekn: Thanks, I hope you enjoyed this part as well.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"Mom? Family?" Buffy heard her mother wonder. Her mother then turned her gaze to her, and asked the same question with her eyes.

"Mom, meet Dawn. Apparently she's some kind of time-traveler who ended up in the wrong universe or something. She's also your daughter. Dawn, meet our mom." Now that sounded weird. Who could have guessed that something like this would happen? Especially as they were only supposed to be watching the house. Well, hanging out in a big room without anyone around to bother them actually, but it came down to the same thing. Her mom didn't seem to have quite grasped what was going on though.

"Daughter?" her mother wondered, before almost being attacked by an exuberant Dawn who had apparently decided that the hurt of not being recognized wasn't equal to the joy of seeing her mother alive.

"You're alive. You're alive. Alive. Alive," Dawn murmured as she stood there with her arms around their mother. "You didn't die. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I missed you so."

"Ehm, it's good to meet you too," Joyce said, but from the questioning look it was obvious to Buffy that her mother had no idea of how to handle this situation. Not that Buffy thought she could help much. She was pretty much baffled herself on how to deal with the new sister who'd come from nowhere.

A sister who wasn't exactly human to boot. Well, she wasn't a demon either, so that at least was a good thing. Although, if what she'd seen so far was any indication, she had no doubt that the other Buffy must have felt differently at times. Demons after all, could be killed when they started being annoying. When it came to little sisters, even ones crushing on a friend of yours, the solution wasn't that simple.

Dawn suddenly let their mother go, and taking a step back she looked her mother over with a critical look. "Are you alright? Have they checked for the tumor yet? Has it been removed? Are you in any danger of dying?"

"I'm fine, the tumor has been removed and there is nothing else wrong with me."

"Thank you. Thank you," Dawn sniffed as she once again threw her arms around her mother. "I missed you so much."

"Sshh, there now. I'm here, you can relax now."

"Mommy," Dawn sniffed again, and for a moment she turned her head in such a way that Buffy had a clear look of her face.

It was in that moment, that single instant in time, that Buffy realized that the girl had been telling the truth. Sure, maybe she had embellished her own part in the story she'd told so far, but the naked pain and happiness expressed so clearly on her face couldn't possibly be faked. Dawn really was her sister. The daughter of Hank and Joyce Summers. She had a sister.

Great. She didn't know anyone else who was burdened with something like that so she was left with a couple of questions.

How did you handle having a sister? What were you supposed to do with one? Okay, there was the sibling rivalry stuff, but what else was there? You got more presents for your birthday and Christmas, but had to buy more as well. So, that wasn't much of an advantage. Especially with a younger sister who couldn't afford the same stuff.

Ah, she could figure it out later. Oh wait, the sibling rivalry stuff. That was important. How was that supposed to work? Did that come naturally or were you supposed to simply start it? And how did it work when one side had such an obvious advantage? Dawn already knew everything about her, or at least the things that were the same, but she had no idea of what embarrassing things Dawn had done.

This was difficult. But now she should first pay attention to her mother and sister again. Sister. How weird was that?

"Sshh," her mother continued to calm Dawn while stroking her on the head. From the look on her face, it was obvious that her mother had already taken the girl to her heart, and that wasn't something that Buffy could be sure was a good thing. The girl wanted to go back to her own time, universe, whatever, and this way her mother would feel the pain of loss. Losing a daughter she'd only had for such a short time. But then again, Dawn hadn't had much time with her real mother so this wasn't all that bad.

No, it wasn't bad at all. Both of them deserved a measure of happiness, and judging by the big grin on Tara's face, it was obvious that they were happy. Probably almost blinding Tara with the glare of their auras. If that was possible, after all it wasn't as if she had any idea of how auras really worked. Still, the love and joy coming from the pair could even be recognized by her, so it had to be really obvious to Tara.

"I missed you so much," Dawn murmured once again, before letting go and taking a step back.

"Did I die in your universe?" Joyce asked softly, trying not to scare Dawn away with the question.

"Yes, the tumor... They thought they'd removed it, but it came back and one day when I got back from school you were lying on the ground, and-" Dawn burst into tears again, and threw her arms around her mother for the second time. An action that Buffy now understood much better. Having to discover her mother lying dead on the floor was one of the recurring nightmares she'd had ever since she became a Slayer.

"I'm sorry I asked honey, it's alright now. I'm alive."

"Mom," Dawn once again murmured from where she was ensconced in the loving arms of their mother. It wasn't long though before she once again stood back, and tried to act like the worldly time-traveler she had seemed at first instead of the little lost girl she now appeared to be. It was at that time that she first noticed Allan. Someone she obviously didn't know. "Who's that?"

The hostility was obvious, though hidden as much as possible, and it reminded Buffy of when she'd first found out about Allan and her mom. Not that her opinion had changed since that time, but after having had to deal with Ted, and knowing that Allan had worked for the mayor, she felt that she was very much justified in her suspicions.

Having dealt with her however, Allan didn't have a lot of problems with Dawn and he smiled brightly. "Yes, I can see the resemblance now. You really are a lot like your sister." Holding out his hand, he then introduced himself.

"Allan Finch?" Dawn almost screeched in surprise. "You mean the one who go-"

While she cut off the words, Buffy couldn't help but noticed the quick look that was sent at Faith. A look of such surprise, and surprisingly gratitude, that it seemed to confirm a lot more of her story. In particular the part about Faith being in jail. Who knew what could have happened if Xander hadn't warned them about Finch being in the alley? If Faith had actually plunged the stake in Allan's heart, instead of only scaring the man?

Faith too seemed to understand the look, and while it probably wasn't very noticeable to anyone but Buffy, and Xander, she softened her stance towards Dawn. It was probably a bit hard to hate someone who had ensured that you wouldn't go down the dark path. Could there have been other things as well that concerned Faith? Xander had been very adamant in the beginning that they should include Faith in what they were doing. That hadn't seemed out of character for Xander, but it was possible that Dawn's letter had something to do with it as well.

Dawn had gotten over her initial surprise now, and accepting Allan's hand she smiled back. "I'm Dawn Summers. Ehm, no offense or anything, I only just arrived here, but what are you doing here?"

"I'm seeing your mother," Allan replied truthfully.

"Seeing my mother? What, as in dating?"

"Yes."

"Ew, that's like. Ew, yuck. Now you've mentally scarred me for the rest of my life. Ew. You're not actually ha- Ew. I don't even want to think about THAT," Dawn shivered before turning to Buffy. "How could you let this happen? Don't you remember Ted?"

"Hey, I'm not any more happy about this than you are. It was their own choice though, and he's safe."

"Yeah well, say that again when we've suddenly got a little brother or sister. Ew! They're ancient. It's disgusting to even think about."

"Ancient?" her mother asked, and from the way Dawn's eyes suddenly grew it was pretty obvious that Dawn recognized that particular tone of voice as well.

"Ehm, well-preserved? Not the youngest? Very nice, and never angry at your youngest daughter? Even if you didn't know you had one until today?"

"Do you really believe that's going to work?"

"Well, I can't use my usual excuse," Dawn shrugged at their mother's comment.

"Really? And what would that be?"

Shuffling a bit with her feet, Dawn tried to look as innocent as possible. "Buffy did it?"

What? How could she do that? Oh, that was just so unfair and Buffy had no intention of simply letting that go. "How many times have you used that when it wasn't true!"

"Not that often," Dawn muttered.

"And more specifically? You know in actual numbers perhaps?"

"Once, maybe twice."

"A week?" Because if Dawn thought even for a moment that she'd believe that was in their entire life she was pretty much mistaken.

"A day," Dawn smiled back, looking more cheeky than even while she was obsessed with Xander. And why was her own sister obsessed with her best male friend anyway? Couldn't she have picked some random stranger to moon over? While thinking about her sister having sex might not be quite as bad as the thought of her mo- Ew! That was something she absolutely shared with Dawn. But the thought of her sister was probably only not that bad because of how they'd met. Which of course wasn't exactly the normal way for sisters to meet.

First, back to being angry at her sister. "Every day! How can you do that to me?"

"Oh relax, it wasn't as if mom actually noticed the difference between what you actually did and the little I added."

What? Looking at her mother for support, Buffy noticed that her mother was trying to hold in her laughter. Trying not to laugh! How could she do that? To her? Her favorite, although no longer only, daughter? "Mo-o-o-o-m!"

"I'm sorry Buffy," her mother said after having calmed down a little. "But she has a point there."

Now that was just unfair. "Yeah well, just wait until she comes complaining about the noise when you and Allan are, you know, reacquainting."

"Oh. Ew! Buffy! Was that really necessary? I really can't handle thinking about that! That's just gross. It's bad enough to know that it's theoretically possible, but to know for sure that it actually happens. With sound effects! No, that's just... EW!"

"Well, if I hadn't believed you're Buffy's sister before, I certainly would now," Allan spoke up. Not that he seemed bothered by Dawn's outburst. In fact, he appeared amused by it. Amused, as if it was something that he could laugh about.

"Really? Well, I would have liked a better way to prove it. To think that the two of you are doing what only Xander and I should be doing is no-"

"Xander?" their mother interrupted. "You're having sex with Xander? Aren't you a bit young for that?"

Buffy wasn't entirely sure who that last comment was directed at, and neither did the two people it concerned as they both spoke up. "I haven't touched her!"

"I'm not too young."

As expected, those answers confused her mother. "Which is it? Did you, or did you not, have sex with my daughter? Especially when you already have a girlfriend."

"Not recently," Xander said, which of course was pretty much the wrong answer.

"Not recently?" Ow, now that sounded cold. Mom was in total protective mode, not that Dawn seemed happy about it.

"It was six years ago!" While the truth, this probably wouldn't endear him to her mother either.

"Six years?" her mother sounded shocked, and turned to look at Dawn. Oh no, as expected she'd drawn the wrong conclusion. "How old were you then Dawn? Eleven?"

"What? No! It was when I went back in time, and I seduced him. He was younger than me at that time so it would've been my fault." Really? The girl who moments ago showed how easily she blamed her totally innocent sister was now willing to take the fall for someone else? Well, she obviously wasn't as self-centered as B uffy had started to suspect her to be.

"Went back in time?" her mother asked in surprise.

"I already said that, didn't I?" Buffy spoke up. Why weren't the others helping? They'd been quiet for far too long now. "She came from now, went back in time, made a mistake and when she got back it was all different."

"That's impossible," Allan said.

"Why?"

"Time travel can't be done. Even Wilkins didn't believe that was possible."

"You seemed to believe it before," Willow pointed out. Finally some help!

Allan shook his head. "No, I believe she's not from here but from a world with a different time line. I thought that's what you meant by time travel. Because interdimensional travel is possible, that's what the Hellmouth is based on after all, but not going back in time."

"It's true though," Dawn stated. "Ask Xander. How can you explain what I did to him if I couldn't have traveled back in time?"

"I don't know. Maybe you thought you traveled back in time, but instead went to a different dimension?"

"Then how did I end up here? Knowing what happened during my travel? Wouldn't I have returned to my own, or even another, dimension if that was the case?" Dawn asked.

Allan shook his head though. "No. I admit that there are some things that appear to point in the direction of time-travel, but there probably is an explanation that doesn't involve it. Because that would simply require too much power for anyone to have. Human or demon."

"Yes, that's what we thought as well when Xander mentioned time travel. The only thing we could come up with that might help was buying a DeLorean. And we refrained from doing that as well."

"So, how did you end up back in the past then?" Faith asked. And as Buffy had expected, her friend now sounded a lot warmer while talking to Dawn. Well, less cold was a more accurate description.

"We started out thinking about how to get the amulet from wherever it was hidden in our own time."

"What amulet?" their mother asked, and Dawn quickly explained how she and the others from that universe had been looking for an amulet that would close the Hellmouth and thereby stop the First.

"The First?" Allan interrupted, while his eyes went wide. "You've fought the First?"

"Not directly, what with him being all intangible and all. But yeah, we fought his minions. Now, would you mind letting me explain? It's been a long day for me, and I'd really like to finish before I fall down."

"Oh, sure. That can come tomorrow. I'm sure that Rupert will want to hear it as well."

"Rupert?" Dawn asked, before realizing who was probably meant. "Oh, Giles! Yeah, he'll want to know. Okay then, where was I? Ah, of course. Anyway, we were looking to see if we could find out where the amulet was hidden, but we couldn't figure it out. We even contacted Angel to see if he knew if the lawyers from hell had it, but he couldn't help us either."

"The lawyers from hell?" Buffy wanted to know.

Dawn looked a bit strangely at that question, but answered nonetheless. "Wolfram and Hart. You know, the evil lawyers from LA?"

"Oh them, sorry I've never heard them mentioned like that and thought it might be something else. Go on."

"Right. Now, while we'd been looking for it in our time, Willow had decided that she might as well look for a way to travel through time while she was at it. Of course, anybody else would have failed at both tasks, but she actually found a text that claimed it was possible to travel through time. Based around the fact that it was actually similar to traveling to another dimension.

"The only thing that was needed for it was something of nearly unlimited power, and something capable of making it easier to cross those boundaries. Which is where it became a bit of a problem."

"A bit of a problem?" Allan asked. "If that's a bit, what is a big problem?"

"A goddess trying to kill you," Dawn sighed, "but that's unimportant for this story. Anyway, while we actually knew that we had what was needed for the spell, we didn't know how to actually use it."

"You had something like that? What was it?"

This time Dawn turned to Buffy again, asking her silently if she could trust the man who was dating their mother. A question that she reluctantly had to answer positively to. Why couldn't Allan be more like Ted had been? Evil to the core of his artificial heart? That way she could have gotten rid of him without anyone feeling bad about it. Of course, it wasn't as if she wanted her mother to be unhappy, she just thought that it should be possible for her mother to be happy without another man in the house.

Even after she had nodded that Allan could be trusted, Dawn hesitated before answering. Not too long though as she eventually explained it to Allan and her mother. "Me. The thing of nearly unlimited power that is capable of easily crossing dimensional borders is me."

"That doesn't make much sense," Allan said. Of course, Buffy had to agree with that, but she also understood that the original explanation had probably come from Willow. Which meant that it was probably too complicated for her to understand anyway. After the summary that is. Because that part she did understand.

Sorta.

"I didn't exist until about three years ago. Which is when the Key, some sort of interdimensional energy thing, was trapped by a group of monks inside a body. That body was given a life, a history, thoughts, everything that makes someone human. The name that body received was Dawn Summers. A real breathing, living, human being."

"You're not real?" their mother asked a bit confused.

"I'm real!" Dawn immediately bit back, obviously frustrated about that. "Everybody had memories of me, and there was never any question about it that I was related to you. Every bloodtest, DNA test, and whatever you can think of will prove that. To quote a certain annoying kid: I'm a real person, and my name is Dawn Summers."

"I'm sorry honey, I didn't mean to hurt you like that," their mother soothed Dawn. "It just came as a bit of a shock, that's all."

"I hate it," Dawn pouted. "Every time I'm reminded of it, I hate it more. I hate not being normal, and I don't even have any cool powers to go with it. I'm just the side-kick who gets kidnapped every other week, and has to be saved by her hero sister."

"Ssh," their mother said while getting up, walking over to Dawn, and gathering her in her arms. "I know that you're real. I may not have any memories of you, but I know that you're my daughter and you're more than welcome here. You'll never have to doubt my love."

"Thank you," Dawn whispered back while snuggling in her mothers arms a bit. She then let out a sigh, and continued speaking again. "But I need to explain the rest now. I'm not entirely sure of what Willow did, although I know which books she used, but in the end she found what was needed. The whole ritual involved far too much for me to want to remember, but eventually we set up a stable portal to the past and stepped through."

"That's it?" Willow asked. "That's all you're going to say? What about how you determined how far back you had to go?"

"We knew the last date that the amulet had been seen, and we went back to the next day."

"Okay, but how did you go back? How did you say 'that is when we need to go, and we do it like this'? And how did you go back? And how-"

"Woah Red," Faith interrupted just before Buffy could do so herself. "Shouldn't you give the kid some time to answer the questions before you keep on coming up with new ones?"

"Oh, yes. Maybe you're right. Ehm, Dawn? Could you answer those questions?"

"Willow did all that, I don't know how it worked!" Dawn said in a panicked voice. "Does that mean I can't go back? Because I really should have listened to Willow when she said that we shouldn't do anything that could change the time-line. But I thought it wasn't really a problem, that Xander would forget the night, and that the letter didn't count."

"I don't know," Willow admitted. "We'll have to see, but don't you know how you got back either? Did the other me have to do the whole ritual again when you went back to your own time?"

"No, I had to be there, but no ritual. She said that I already had some sort of connection to our time, and that it didn't need to be set up again. Willow only needed a drop of blood for the focus. Just the drop of blood would probably have been enough for them to return anyway."

"Does that mean you also have a connection to six years ago? That would make it easier to go back. Well, less difficult probably. I still don't know how to do it, but you knew what books the other me had read?"

Listening to the conversation, Buffy wondered exactly when the decision had been made that they were going to help Dawn. Not that she didn't want to help, but in her opinion that whole world didn't sound like it was worth going back to. Her mom was dead, one of her best friends was a killer locked up in a jail somewhere, and while she didn't like him dating her mother she didn't want to see Allan dead either.

And while all of that seemed pretty bad, she had a feeling it was just the tip of the iceberg. That goddess that Dawn had mentioned didn't sound like fun, and the First sounded like a far too big problem as well. Which meant it was time for her to raise a couple of points. "Okay, what happens if we go back in time? Do we die? Do the other usses live on happily, or unhappily, ever after? I kinda like my life, and, no offense Dawn, if helping my new sister means that I'll no longer exist I don't know if I want to do that."

"You won't cease to exist," Dawn was quick to point out, "you'll just turn into the other you again."

"And mom?"

That was something Dawn obviously didn't have an answer too. Unfortunately, Willow did. "It's not like that at all. According to the many-worlds theory we live in a different universe from Dawn's Buffy. Which means that if we help her she will go back to them, but we'll still exist."

Buffy wasn't too sure about that, but decided not to try to argue with Willow about it. A discussion like that would only serve to confuse her, and wouldn't be of any use anyway. Willow was the one who knew about stuff like that.

"Does that mean that Buffy and the others got back home, and don't know where I am?" Dawn asked in a horrified voice. "That they're worried about me?"

"Only if we can't get you back there at the same time as them. Which we should. If we knew how to do the whole time-traveling thing."

Her mother was the next to speak. "Are you sure that you want to go back there Dawn? It sounds like a dangerous place. You would be safer here."

"I can't abandon the others mom, I just can't. They need everybody to defeat the First, and they'll be worried about me as well. My friends won't know what happened to me, and I'll miss them too, and..." Dawn trailed off. She probably had a hundred different reasons to go back, and none really to stay here.

The girl was also her sister. The fact that she wasn't from this world, or had even been born as a human didn't matter to her. The only thing that actually did matter was that her sister needed her help. And Buffy Summers would help her sister, even if she still doubted that everything would work out as fine as Willow said it would. Was time travel always this confusing?

"Your friends are probably around in this world as well," Xander suddenly spoke up. Wow, he'd been so quiet that she'd almost forgotten he was here as well. "And I know that you're more than welcome here."

"Yeah D," Faith said, using a normal—well normal for Faith—nickname for Dawn for the very first time. "As long as you don't try to fuck the X-man again you can probably stay around."

"Faith!"

"Oops, sorry Mrs. S." Only her mom could get an apology from Faith for something like that. Not that it prevented Faith from saying it in the first place, but she did apologize for it.

"You mean I'm not allowed to do the very thing that got me into this mess?" Dawn asked. "Then what's the use of staying here?"

It was a weak attempt at a joke, but to Buffy it was obvious that Dawn tried to bridge the gap between her and Faith as well. "Hah, nobody's stopping you from finding your own stud to ride."

"Faith," her mother sighed.

"Sorry."

"What if I don't want to ride any other stud? What if I want to have my wicked way with Xander, and spend a couple of days in bed with him. Doing nothing but riding him long and hard."

"DAWN!"

"Sorry mom." Dawn seemed a bit surprised. Whether it was at the admonishment from her mother or her own comment, Buffy couldn't tell. It just didn't sound like anything she'd expect her little sister to say.

"You're pretty open about sex, D, not nearly as uptight as your sister. What's up with that?"

"Anya," Dawn shrugged. "She obviously isn't around here, but nobody could possibly stay innocent around her for long."

"Well, she sounds like fun. I wish I could meet her," Faith drawled. Which wasn't a prospect Buffy liked. To have another Faith-like person here would probably drive her mother crazy. And not just her mother either. Dawn's reaction was very interesting though.

"Don't say that!"

"Say what?" Buffy asked confused. Faith hadn't said anything wrong, had she?

Dawn obviously thought different about that. "The W word. I told you what happened when Cordelia said that, didn't I?"

"Well, that was purely coincidence. There's no reason to believe anything like that will happen here as well."

"Why not? There are a lot of vengeance demons and they can look just like us and change the past, and..." Dawn suddenly trailed off as she realized the same thing Buffy did. "I'm not one! If I was I wouldn't have to ask you to help me get back."

"Are you sure? Because every time I imagined what it would be like to have a sister I thought it would be hell."

"Ha. Ha. Very funny Buffy, but remember, you're the lucky one. I'm the one who has to put up with you."

"I think this has gone on for long enough now," her mother interrupted before Buffy could deliver her own stinging reply. "Dawn looks like she will fall of her feet any moment now-"

"I do not," Dawn immediately interrupted.

Not that their mother cared about that. "And I think that the rest of this discussion can best wait until Rupert and Jenny are here as well. They'll be able to help, and when you're all wide awake it will go better anyway."

"But-" Buffy tried before being cut off by her mother.

"I know that you're old enough to make those decisions for yourself, but Dawn isn't."

"Mom! I so am old enough."

"No young lady, you're not, and that's final. You can sleep in Buffy's old room. Are you staying as well?" That question was aimed at her, and Buffy nodded in acknowledgment. There was no way that she'd let someone she wasn't entirely certain about stay in the same house as her mother while she wasn't there. "Alright, I'll set up a bed for Dawn then. That should give you another ten minutes to finish up your tale for tonight. The rest will have to wait until tomorrow." Having said that, her mother got to her feet and walked up the stairs.

After staring at her mother with an incredulous expression, Dawn turned back to face them and suddenly frowned. "Wait a minute, did she just say Jenny? As in Miss Calendar?"

"No, as in Mrs. Giles actually."

….…

Waking up was strange. Not because she didn't do so on a regular basis, or because there had never been anyone in her room when she did, but because the other person in the room was someone from out of this world. Her little sister. She had a sister. A little sister with whom she could share stuff, and talk to about all sorts of things.

Of course, considering her luck it made sense that the moment she got a sister that sister was already at a difficult age. Even in those few short hours that she'd known Dawn it had already become clear that her sister didn't really listen to what she said. Well, it was more a case of listening and not paying any attention to it, but that was practically the same thing. Nevertheless it was probably really nice to have a sister. Even if that sister had only gotten here because of the magical work of some monks, a bit of time travel, and the Dawn messing up during that time traveling.

Which didn't make her any stranger than for example Angel, and she'd loved him even after finding out he was a vampire. Of course, the annoying curse had been in the way of their happiness and eventually he'd left for Los Angeles.

Turning on her side so that she had a better view, Buffy studied the sleeping face of her little sister. She obviously didn't dye her hair, instead choosing to leave it in its natural color. It looked really pretty though, and with a pang of regret Buffy realized that she'd missed a whole bunch of moments where they could have done each other's hair. That was the kind of thing you did with a sister, wasn't it? The whole tea party thing wasn't something she missed, but those comfortable times where it would just be the two of them... they could have been so much fun.

What else could she determine from the girl's face? Obviously she was pretty, and Buffy could more or less understand why Xander had fallen for Dawn during that night six years ago. And, while it could probably be seen as a sign of an overgrown ego, the fact that Dawn did look a bit like her had probably helped in that regard as well.

Maybe she should switch subject though. Thinking about Dawn and Xander doing the things Faith couldn't stop talking about just didn't sit well with her. It was bad enough that she had to hear about those things from her friends, but her own sister? No thank you.

Which meant... ah! Personality. The one thing that Dawn didn't seem to be able to be persistent in. And if you weren't persistent in personality you weren't in anything you talked about either. In that regard it surprised her that despite all the signs she'd gotten last night she had no trouble at all accepting Dawn as her sister. Well, that little scene with her mother had undoubtedly helped in that regard, but there were still some inconsistencies in her behavior. Of course, they could be explained away without much trouble.

The undeclared war between Dawn and Faith where it concerned Xander's affection had been a great influence on how Dawn had behaved last night. First there had been the overconfident Dawn who tried to show everybody how important she was to the other Scoobies, and when Faith had scoffed at that she had become a far more realistic influence on the other Buffy and friends.

Of course, once Faith and Xander had started doing their thing Dawn had decided that she wanted a piece of the action as well. Which led to her turning into some kind of sex-obsessed teenage girl. Probably the most realistic impression if her own memories of that age were any indication. But then mom had come home.

Even now the naked relief and happiness that she'd seen on Dawn's face caused a lump in her throat. How long had it been since Dawn had last seen her mother alive? It was hard to say, but as she hadn't seemed affected by the loss when she had been talking about the time travel stuff it was probably more than a year. Maybe even two or three years. Buffy doubted it was much longer as the doctors had saved her mother three years ago.

Saved. Because Xander had told her that it might be a good idea for her mother to have a brainscan. Because he'd collected brochures and booklets depicting worst-case scenarios. And while she herself had only been half-convinced at the time she'd convinced her mother to have a scan anyway. She had been pretty grateful for Xander's insistence back then, but now that she knew what would have happened her gratitude had increased tenfold.

She really should thank Xander for how he'd saved her mother. Unfortunately, figuring out how she could thank him was a bit more difficult. What could possibly be an adequate thanks for saving someone's life? Of course, his reasons for saving her mother had as much to do with receiving gratitude as her reasons for slaying did. Absolutely nothing.

"What are you thinking about?"

What? She had been so deep in thought that she hadn't even realized Dawn had awoken. "Are you awake already? Shouldn't you get some more sleep?"

"Nah, I can handle this, and I really should start working on getting back home. Not that I don't like it here, what with mom being alive and all, but you know..."

"Yeah," Buffy said, and she did understand. No matter how much Dawn might like this time-line, there were people waiting for her in the other world. People who would be worried. "You have a life already."

"Right," Dawn agreed. "Although it's one without mom, an evil Faith, and a Xander who I nev-"

"Let's skip the thing about Xander, okay?" Buffy interrupted. "There are some things I really don't need to know about my friends, and the details of what he did to my sister or how good he can use his tongue are definitely out."

"His tongue? Really? I told him he might want to practice that, but we didn't have much time that night. So, you must've heard something. Please tell me?"

Buffy was horrified, and desperately wishing she'd kept her big mouth shut. Fortunately she was resistant to the way Dawn adopted a puppy-dog look and could turn the conversation to another subject. "The other me, is she dating anyone?"

Dawn didn't appear to want to answer the question, and countered it with a question of her own. "Why do you want to know?"

"Why are you evading the question? Last night you couldn't stop talking about the other usses, and now you're being difficult? That doesn't make much sense to me."

"Maybe I shouldn't have been telling so much about them. I know it hurt mom, and Faith as well. Is she really nice here? Even before she'd gone evil she was a bit wild back home. Which was pretty cool of course, but it wasn't very good for teamwork and stuff."

"Faith is one of my best friends, and while she was a bit wild and reckless she has calmed down since she started dating Xander. They make quite a cute couple." Buffy said, before suddenly realizing something. "Hey! You're trying to change the subject. Come on little sister, I just want to hear a yes or no."

"How would you know if I'm telling the truth? Do you even want to hear the truth?" Dawn hedged.

Why did she keep dancing around it? Was it so terrible? It couldn't really be any worse than being single was, could it? "Just tell me okay."

For a moment it seemed Dawn was trying to give another evading answer, but rolling over to stare at the ceiling she gave a simple yes.

"Really? Is he cute?"

"Yes, she is."

"She!" Buffy almost screamed, before noticing the grin on Dawn's face. Picking up her pillow, she threw it at her sister. "Oh you. Just tell me the truth."

"Okay," Dawn sighed. "You're not really dating, but you are sleeping with someone who used to be evil. He did some things that I only heard about shortly before we left, and that was the reason I wrote to Xander that he should stake him."

"Stake him?" Buffy wondered before she suddenly remembered that Xander had told her why he had staked a certain vampire. "SPIKE?"

"Told you you wouldn't like it."

"Hey, there's a difference between having to hear that I'm single there as well and being told that I'm dating Fangface Junior."

"Fangface Junior? What? Did Faith come up with that?"

"Yes, because he's Angel's grandchilde and stuff. You know about that, don't you?"

"I know."

Well, this would be the perfect time for a question that she'd been wondering about as well. "How is Angel in your world?"

"He's doing as well as he can. I don't really ask about him, you—the other you I mean—never really talked about him after he left."

"He left? For Los Angeles? That's what he did here. He's doing the whole detective thing there now."

"Yeah, he's doing that back home as well. But, like I said, I don't know much more."

Somehow Buffy had a feeling that Dawn wasn't telling the entire truth about this, but this time around she wasn't going to ask about it. The Spike thing was bad enough; she had no intention of hearing anything similar about her former love.

"Okay, so tell me a bit more about yourself. I want to know more about the little sister I never knew I had."

"Sure. Obviously I'm the more intelligent and better looking of the Summers sisters."

"Oh please," Buffy immediately decided to bury that notion. "There's no way that that's true, so you can stop lying."

"Me? Lying? Well if that's the case, how come you're the one who'll have to wait for the shower until I'm finished?"

"What?" Buffy asked a bit confused, but Dawn had already slipped out of the bed and was out of the bedroom within moments.

Okay, so that hadn't been part of the plan. Still, it wasn't as if a shower really mattered in the great scheme of things. Nevertheless, Buffy decided she had to get back at her sister for that, and all she needed for that was an idea of what she could do. Surely she should be able to come up with something?

Had the situation been different she might have been able to use Dawn's infatuation with Xander. Hah! Infatuation, now who was the cleverer of the two? Anyway, that wasn't really possible now because it wouldn't be any fun to tease Dawn if Xander actually reciprocated the feelings. Not that she thought he did: he had always been faithful to his girlfriends. Both times he'd actually dated anyone that is.

She kept trying to come up with a plan until finally, after far too long, the shower shut off and it was her turn. Even while standing under the warm running water of the shower the thoughts of revenge didn't leave her. Was this what all that sibling rivalry stuff was about? Always trying to come up with a way to pay back the latest insult? And trying to be one step ahead of your sister?

Well, real sibling rivalry probably didn't require nearly as much conscious thought. But unlike other sisters she didn't really know where to start in this regard. While Dawn had been talking for most of the evening, she hadn't actually talked told a lot about herself—apart from some of the facts concerning where she came from and a couple of random comments concerning the other thems, usses, whatever.

Which, Buffy realized, didn't give her a lot to play with. Still, she thought while soaping herself down, there had to be a way. Another thought struck her then though. Spike. In the other world she was dating Spike. Or maybe not dating, she wasn't exactly too sure about what Dawn had meant. Aside from the far too uncomfortable fact that he regularly moved his cold and blooded hands over her body.

No! Other thoughts! Quick! Turning her face into the streaming water, she tried to banish the thought of how disgusting that must have been. No vampire would get to touch her like that, not even Angel had done so and he was the only one for whom she might have made an exception. Putting a hand before her mouth, she tried desperately to restrain her suddenly mutinous body from throwing up.

How screwed up was the other her that she didn't mind something like that? The world couldn't possibly be bad enough to warrant something like that, could it? Sure, from what little she'd gathered from Dawn she understood it wasn't nearly as good a world as her own, but still...

Having calmed down again, Buffy quickly rinsed the remainder of the soap away and got out of the shower. Taking her big fluffy towel, she started to dry herself while desperately turning her attention away from the thoughts of how that filthy vampire might have been touching her in all her intimate places. Naturally, this meant that she once again turned to the subject of Dawn. And this time she did manage to come up with a plan. Too bad that plan could only be carried out if she managed to convince Dawn to stay.

But why would Dawn want to go back to that other world anyway? It wasn't as if there was anything interesting for her there. Okay, so everybody already knew her. That would be the case here soon enough, and this world didn't have any vampires who believed they could touch people where they really shouldn't.

This time she wasn't fast enough to swallow down the bile that rose in her throat, but she did manage to reach the toilet instead of throwing up in the middle of the bathroom.

….…

"Which means that it should be possible for us to go back in time as well," Willow finished her explanation. An explanation that Buffy really hadn't understood very well, but was more than willing to accept.

"I think that between the four of us it should indeed be possible to create a stable enough portal. But you said that the Willow from your world was capable of doing this on her own?" Giles asked Dawn.

Dawn nodded at that. "Yes, she's very powerful."

"Quite," Giles agreed. "If she really has tampered with our minds, without us even noticing anything was amiss during all that time, her power must be beyond anything I've ever seen. How is she dealing with that?"

"Truthfully?" Dawn asked, obviously preparing for yet another explanation that they wouldn't like. "She's getting better again."

"Better? Again?" Willow asked in a trembling voice, causing Buffy's heart to go out to her.

Dawn looked at her with an expression of sorrow, clearly feeling the same shame that her friend had to face a revelation as well. Wasn't there anyone on that other world who had remained alright? Even Giles had apparently abandoned her last year.

Xander. Yes, she nodded to herself, Xander was always safe. He didn't make that kind of mistake. Dawn loved him after all, and would she love him if he'd done something bad as well?

Dawn loved her too, an irritating inner voice whispered, and she clearly cares about Willow despite whatever had happened.

Which meant absolutely nothing. No, nothing of it mattered. Nothing at all. In each world there were probably good and bad things, and just because Dawn's original world might have had more than its share of the bad stuff didn't mean that the entire world was dark and evil. So, Buffy forced herself to listen to Dawn's short summary of how Willow in her grief had tried to destroy the world.

"Let's get back to business, shall we?" Buffy asked once she'd believed the silence after Dawn's explanation had lasted long enough.

"Y-yes," Willow answered. "I want this spell to work so that I can talk to her."

"What?"

"I want to know what made her do it. Nothing is worth destroying the world: not even losing Tara."

While it sounded a bit morbid, Buffy was more than happy to see Tara agree with that statement. Not that she'd expected Tara to react in any other way, but it was always good to know she'd judged her friend correctly.

"Are you sure that's a good idea though?" Xander asked. "Shouldn't we simply get Dawn home and not mess with the time-line any further?"

"It's alright," Willow said. "This won't affect the time-line as we're both from the future; just different versions of it. In fact it might be a good idea if we all talked to our counterparts, maybe we'd learn some things from them that we can use."

Talk to the other her? The one who slept with Spike? Could she actually handle that? It sounded pretty bad, but maybe Willow was right and they could learn something from each other. Buffy wasn't exactly sure how the other Buffy could help her, but she already knew the first thing she'd say to her own counterpart. And the words 'stake Spike' weren't all that hard to remember either.

"Okay, let me get this straight," Xander started. "Instead of only sending Dawn back in time, so that she can fix her part of the time-line and travel back to her own future, we'll be traveling into the past with her so that we can talk to our counterparts from the other time-line who are also in our past, which is also their past, so that we can learn from each other?"

"Yes."

"Apart from the fact that I can't believe I actually spoke a sentence like that, do you know how ridiculous that sounds? I mean if you came to Hollywood with a script like that they would laugh you out of their office."

"Well, you know how they say that life is stranger than fiction."

"Yeah, but I kinda figured that whoever had come up with a stupid quote like that actually knew about vampires."

"What about those of us who don't have a counterpart? Because she is in jail?" Faith wanted to know.

"Or dead," Jenny added.

Now those were loaded questions. "You'll come too of course. I'm sure they'll be happy to see you."

Faith snorted at that. "Right. Maybe Blondie and Mrs Tweed, but not me. If D's reaction is anything like theirs they'll probably try to kill me on sight."

"We'll tell them that you're not evil," Willow tried to comfort Faith, before turning to Dawn. "They would believe that, wouldn't they?"

"Where it concerns Faith?" Dawn asked. "I'm not sure, most of it was pretty long ago and Buffy might have forgiven some of it, but she's still pretty pissed at her."

"They'll understand she's not your Faith, won't they? Because I don't want anyone to kill Faith, she's my friend."

"That's sweet Red, but be careful you don't make Blondie jealous."

"I would nev-" Willow turned to Tara, but was cut off when her girlfriend put her finger on her mouth.

"I know, Faith was just teasing."

"Right, I knew that."

"Quite," Giles spoke up. "I believe that if we really want to go there it might be useful if we actually started looking at the books. Are you sure these books contain the information we need?"

"Or the one you asked the Council to send over," Dawn confirmed.

"I see, well let's get to work then."

"Not me," Buffy piped up. "It's time to go slaying. Are you coming Faith?"

"You know me B. While it's hard to resist a good research party, I'm willing to sacrifice that time just to deal some boring, mindless, violence to those who deserve it. It's the curse of being a Slayer." Faith answered. Amazingly enough she actually kept her face straight during the short speech. Of course, only Dawn was actually fooled for even a moment by the act as the others knew exactly how much both of them hated having to do the reading.

Still, Dawn only shrugged before asking if she could come as well.

"Why? Isn't it important for you to know everything you can about the travel thing, just in case it goes wrong again?"

"They're only looking for it, and I've been sitting still for the whole day already. I want to go outside."

"I don-"

"Let her come B," Faith interrupted. "That way she can see how a real woman fights."

Oh no, they were going to do the whole Xander thing again. Casting a longing glance at the table, Buffy wondered if she wouldn't be able to stay here after all.

* * *

Post-fic comments: 

Allen Pitt, dogbertcarroll, charmedloverloes, and Darklight. Thank you all for the feedback. There isn't much I can say in reply to them so I'll just keep it to a heartfelt thank you.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

So this was it. The great portal that they were going to use for traveling through time. It didn't really look like much, did it? It was kinda, well greenish. Weren't things like this supposed to be blue? Every movie and series he'd seen with portals for traveling through space or time had them blue.

"Why is it green?" For a moment Xander thought that he'd voiced his question out loud, but immediately after he realized it was Faith who'd asked it.

"Why not?" Willow asked in reply, still sweating from the mental effort of actually opening the portal.

"Because those things are always blue. It's like an unwritten rule or something."

"I'm green," Dawn told them. "The Key, I mean. Which makes the portal green as well because it's used to travel to another dimension."

"I thought you were going back in time?" Allan asked. Obviously Allan still didn't really believe that they'd actually be doing the time travel stuff. Neither did he for that matter, but that was more the anticipation kind of unbelief. This was going to be so incredibly cool.

"Time is a dimension," Dawn answered distractedly. Obviously she'd considered that question a lot since it was last asked, and in a way her reply made sense.

"Yes, but a different kind of dimension. Don't you think more people would have figured this out if it was possible?"

"No. And it's only different if you look at it like that."

Allan sighed, but remained quiet. During their research in how to actually do the traveling thing all these issues had been raised already, and were then shot down. It was Mrs. Summers who spoke up next. "Are you sure that it's safe? And that you can come back here? To me?"

"Yes mom," Buffy answered.

"We should leave now," Giles suddenly spoke up. "This is draining our strength, and if we keep it up for very long we might not have the strength that we need to open a portal back."

"Oh," Mrs. Summers exclaimed. "I'll be quick then. Dawn?"

The girl practically jumped into Mrs. Summers' arms and hugged her mother hard enough that Xander could see a momentary flash of discomfort on Mrs. Summers' face. "I'll miss you so much."

"I'll miss you too honey. I know it's selfish, but I wish you'd stay here."

Even to him, it was obvious how much the two loved each other. They might have only met nine days ago, but in that time Dawn had wormed her way into each of their hearts. And for Mrs. Summers it had been a new, younger, daughter who was utterly devoted to her. A devotion she happily returned.

"I can't. They'll be so worried about me, and I miss them too."

"I understand," Mrs. Summers sighed while a tear trailed down her face. "But that doesn't mean I won't miss you anyway."

By the way that Dawn was pressing her eyes shut, Xander figured that she was trying to hide her own tears. A suspicion that was confirmed when the tears wouldn't be contained. Nevertheless, she let go and stepping back she spoke in a wavering voice. "Goodbye mom, I love you."

"Goodbye."

Turning away, Dawn then quickly stepped into the shimmering portal and disappeared out of sight. "Okay, well it seems my sister decided to be the first. Let's follow her before the portal closes," Buffy said before saying her own goodbye to her mother and stepping through the portal.

One by one, the others followed. Except for Allen and Mrs. Summers—he really should remember to call her Joyce now—they were all going. Even Faith had been convinced. Although he had a sneaking suspicion that might have something to do with the fact that she didn't trust Dawn and him alone. Because that's what they would've been. After talking to their, or rather his, counterpart for a while they would follow the young Xander and Dawn until they'd have a chance to take the letter and set things right again.

If that would set it right. He knew that he wasn't the only one who had doubts concerning that, but he didn't know what could possibly go wrong. And why was he trying to jinx the situation? There were so many things that could go wrong. The one thing they all feared, or at least he did, was that taking the letter would mean that this universe would no longer exist. Or never existed in the first place. But Willow had said that was unlikely, and Dawn had explained about the world where he and Willow were vampires, and how it had still existed after the spell had been broken.

An entire world created just for a spell, Xander shivered at the sheer power that would be needed for something like that. And apparently he'd been engaged to this Anya despite the fact that she'd once been a vengeance demon. That was definitely something he wanted to ask his other self about, and maybe this Anya could explain the problems with their plan a bit better as well.

By now, his turn had arrived. Only Willow and Tara hadn't gone through yet and they would have to go last to keep the spell running as long as possible. Alright. Taking a deep breath he faced the portal, and hesitated a moment. Only a moment though, and nobody else should have been able to notice it. In that short moment he wondered what this was going to feel like. Would it hurt, wouldn't he really notice it, what?

Only one way to find out.

As he stepped into the portal, the world turned green. Everything ceased to exist, except for the green. It was almost as if he was serenely floating in a green room. A pretty green with some flashing green lightning or something, but still not the blue that science fiction always showed. Which he was sorely disappointed about.

But floating wasn't enough as he had to go back in time. To where the others were. But how did he do that? Dawn had said that it was the easiest thing possible and that he wouldn't even have to think about it, but she'd also said that this led everywhere. That this was a way to reach every world world in existence, barely contained within that temporary portal.

So much power: a single being who could destroy the world by using her own blood in a ritual. Sure, the ritual was pretty specific—although he wondered how anyone could have ever written it down when it hadn't even been possible before the Key was turned into a human being—but it was still incredible that it was even possible.

Suddenly, through his musings, there was a sensation of speeding up. Without any resistance from air—how was he breathing then?—he didn't have any idea of how fast he was going. Nothing here was even the least bit like back on earth, leaving him without any way to determine anything. How did he know he was going in the right direction? How did he know if he wasn't going too fast? And most of all, how would he know that he'd arrived at his destination?

Although he still couldn't really feel it—it was more the fact that he knew he was moving—Xander thought he was speeding up. Moving faster, and faster, and faster, until in the end he believed he was moving fast enough to break orbit. Well, except for issues like the lack of oxygen, cosmic radiation, and other stuff like that.

Then he stopped. Well, he thought he stopped. Something that looked very much like the portal he'd just stepped through appeared in his path, and he was slowed down until he was floating right in front of it. Something that lasted only a second as suddenly it felt as if he was given a great push and flew through it.

But he didn't fall. He had been almost horizontal when he went through it, at least that's what it had felt like to him. Of course, without any gravity he couldn't really be sure which way was up. Anyway, instead of diving through the portal, crashing to the ground, and hurting himself, he was suddenly simply standing there. Standing on the ground, as if he'd been standing still.

It wasn't even as if he'd taken a step back in the other world and finished the step in this one. No, he was just standing there with his legs straight and no idea how he'd gotten into that position. Despite the weirdness of that however, he clearly understood the comment Dawn had made when they'd first met her. This really was a trip. "Wow."

"Yeah," Faith agreed. "That was really wicked."

Suddenly first Tara and then Willow appeared out of thin air as well. Turning around for the first time, Xander noticed that there was no portal on this side. "Did it go away already?"

"It was never there," Dawn explained in a far away voice. "This portal doesn't have any single exit that can be seen on this side. That's also why you didn't see any of the others."

"How do you know?" Willow asked curiously.

"The other you came up with that explanation. Don't worry I'm sure you'd have figured it out in a couple of minutes as well."

Something wasn't clear to Xander. "But what does that have to do with us not seeing each other?"

"None of us used the same exit. We each went to a slightly different place, in time and space. The differences aren't all that big on this side, but the inside of the portal was probably so big that the differences there were bigger," Willow said in a thoughtful voice.

"See?" Dawn said to Willow. "Didn't I tell you that you'd figure it out? A dimensional portal works in more dimensions than just the regular three. Well four actually, if you count time, which you should in this case. Anyway, that's why it seemed so endless."

"And green. I still think it's wrong that it was green," Xander said.

"I thought it looked pretty," Buffy voiced her opinion.

"Nah B, I have to agree with X here. It should've been blue."

"Don't complain about the color, it might've been pink you know."

"Wow D, that's harsh."

Dawn shrugged. "We probably should find out what time it is so that we have an idea of how long we can spend with the other yous. "

True, and that was actually something most movies and series never considered. If you could travel through time, why should you leave at the same time as you arrived? Sure, it helped with the jet-lag, or time-lag, or whatever you wanted to call it, but in a town like Sunnydale it was rather stupid.

They had to arrive during the night, and doing an extensive ritual that might draw the attention of every vampire, demon, and other creepy thing wasn't the smartest thing to do while it was dark. Luckily for them, Willow had realized that there was no need for that, and as far as Xander's body knew he had gotten out of bed only a couple of hours ago. Which meant he was pretty fit, even though it was far too dark for his liking, and ready to face the other him.

….…

Due to the fact that Dawn already knew where her sister and friends would be, it didn't take them very long to find them. Still, the scene that greeted them was a lot stranger than he'd expected.

"You look so young," Tara whispered to Willow.

"Well, I'm only fifteen here. But the old other me, she looks so sad."

"She is sad, but she had a good reason for it."

"Where are the others?" Faith asked. "I only see mini-Red and mini-B there. Shouldn't there be a mini-G-man, mini-Wolfboy, and mini-Mrs. Tweed be there as well? I know mini-X is going to be picked up by the beautiful angel in the Bronze, but where are all the other minis?"

"You just had to call us that, didn't you?" Buffy asked with a sigh. "Is that why you came along?"

"Of course not B, but you know I can't resist an easy opening like that. Oh, and mini-Fang of course. Shouldn't he be here as well?"

"We were on our way to the Bronze when they intercepted us. Giles didn't come, Oz wasn't around yet, Jenny wasn't really either, and Angel was probably going to meet us at the Bronze. Or not, you never knew with him. Is that a good enough explanation?"

"Sure, I can live with that. Although I still don't understand what they needed the minis for."

"Huh?" Xander asked, not understanding what Faith meant. "What are you talking about?"

"They were you right?"

"Yes."

"Then what did they need the mini-you for? It's not like they couldn't do everything themselves."

Xander had to think about that, and he noticed that the others did so as well. Except for Dawn, who didn't seem to care. And why would they have to think about it when they could simply ask her? "Dawn, would you mind answering this question? 'Cause Faith has a point: you didn't need us."

"It was an accident. You weren't meant to see us, but when we ran into Buffy and Willow I was sent to get you as well. If we hadn't done that you probably would have gone looking for them and that way we wouldn't have been able to control the situation."

"You mean the whole meeting was an accident? They don't act like it was an accident," he said while indicating the group that was busy discussing things.

"Good acting. At least on our part. The young ones believe it was planned this way."

"And with young ones you mean...?" Buffy asked.

"Oh, the young you. The potentials know what's going on as well. Too bad we missed the part where you tried to stake Spike and was stopped by yourself. That was pretty funny to watch."

Okay. Like everyone else since Dawn had arrived, Xander had gotten a headache from the whole talking about time travel thing. And the fact that this sentence didn't seem to make any sense only made it worse. No, it wasn't that bad. It just sounded weird. "Alright, how about we go meet ourselves?"

"Not yet," Willow quietly said.

"Why not Red? Let's get this over with so that we can go home."

"I'd prefer if the younger usses didn't see us."

"Why? They'll lose their memories of tonight anyway."

Willow shook her head though. "If what Dawn says is true, the reason for the way the time-line changed is because of this meeting."

"I thought it was because of the letter Dawn left?" Buffy asked.

"No," Giles answered, while shaking his head. "I think that Willow might have a point here. This is where things went wrong, and it also gives a better reason for the memory spell as the other Willow must have tried to restore the time line."

"But that wasn't enough."

"No, the spell didn't have as great an effect on Xander as they believed, which may have been helped by Dawn's actions."

"Are you saying that it wasn't all my fault?" Dawn asked; relief and suspicion warring on her face.

"Yes, that is what I'm saying," Giles confirmed. Which wasn't something Xander was very happy about. Did this mean that taking the note wouldn't be enough? He asked the question, and it was Willow who answered it.

"It might be. Without it you might not remember what had happened, or at least you won't know what to change."

Okay. She had a point there. "Are you sure, because I think I would've written some things down myself."

"That, or you would've looked all over town for your pretty angel," Faith pointed out.

"Maybe, but I knew she was- No wait. I wouldn't know, would I?"

"Nope. You wouldn't have a clue about what happened to her."

"Guys, this is giving me a headache," Buffy said while getting to her feet. "I'm going to meet the other me."

"But Buffy, you could mess up the time-line even more," Willow whispered worriedly.

"I don't think I will. It's probably as messed up as it could be, and I really want to talk to her."

"I don't think-"

"Oh cheer up Rupert, the danger isn't all that big if we take care."

Not paying anymore attention to the resulting argument between Giles and Jenny, Xander looked at Dawn, who was frowning while she stared at the group from her own world. "What's wrong Dawn?"

"When I got back with Xander, they told me that they'd been attacked. The risk of that happening was the reason all of us traveled back in time—or at least one of the reasons—so it didn't really bother me. But they used that as an excuse to send the two of us to look for the amulet."

"And?"

"They haven't been attacked yet, and I don't think that's actually going to happen either."

"You mean they lied to you? Why would they do that?"

It was obvious that tearing her eyes away from the scene wasn't easy, but Dawn looked at him anyway. "Because they needed me out of the way."

"Why would they? Oh." Xander suddenly realized the obvious reason for it.

"Exactly. I was already there, or at least a version of me was. One from several days in the future. That would also explain why they gave me so much time with you."

"I thought that was because they couldn't find us?"

"So did I, but when you think about it there weren't many places we could've gone."

"Well-"

Dawn shook her head to cut him off. "No, they knew I wouldn't endanger you and they also probably knew what I'd do."

"True," Xander admitted. "Especially if they already heard about it from you. This you, not the other one. I think."

"Right. So, let's face the music." And without paying any more attention to the ongoing argument, Dawn quickly ran after Buffy. Stopping her only moments before she would have stepped out to confront the other time travelers.

Watching the vigorous hand waving and shaking of heads, Xander couldn't resist the smile. Those two were always fighting. Not in a bad way of course, but Buffy had taken up the mantle of big sister just when Dawn believed she no longer had to worry about that. In other words: Buffy went to extremes to set a good example for her newfound sister, while Dawn tried to do the things she otherwise couldn't.

For some reason those two goals conflicted. Gee, why would that be?

It made for some funny scenes though, and he knew that he wasn't the only one who'd had to suppress a smile every now and then. Even now, thinking about a particular scene that took place in the Magic Shop where- Hey that was interesting. Tearing himself away from the memory he noticed that Buffy had actually listened to whatever Dawn had to say. Now that was a surprising development.

….…

When they reached the others, the other Buffy had sent the unknowns—potentials Xander remembered Dawn calling them—off with the young Buffy and Willow. The excuse had apparently been to do some scouting. Not exactly what he would call a decent excuse, but it worked in getting them out of the way.

"So, you're the other usses," the other Buffy said with an incredulous look on her face. "Kinda weird, I didn't expect to meet two different versions of me in my entire life, let alone on the same day."

"Hey, you're the ones who messed up the time-line in the first place."

"Dawn did, by having her fun with Xander."

"Do we have to talk about that?" the other Xander asked. "I don't think this is the right place or time to be playing the blame game."

"You're right," Buffy answered. "Something happened that caused us to exist, and we're here to make sure that Dawn can get back. By the way, why isn't the vampire dust?"

"What?" the other Buffy asked confused.

"Spike: why haven't you dusted him? Do you want me to do it?"

"Not bloody likely! I'm a member of this team so you can forget about dusting me. If you even could."

"That's right, he's working with us. And he has his soul."

"So? He's still a vampire, isn't he? One who has killed, and did whatever it was that Dawn refused to tell me about."

"What did she refuse to tell you about?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't be wondering, now would I? But it seemed pretty bad," Buffy answered. His Buffy. Man, this was weird: if it hadn't been for the fact that the two were at least wearing different clothes Xander had a feeling he would have been quite confused. Well, more confused was probably a more accurate description.

The other Buffy turned to look at Dawn with a questioning frown. "What are you- Oh! But that wasn't completely his fault, and he got his soul because of it."

"Whatever," Dawn replied, obviously not agreeing with her sister.

"So, are you going to tell us, or will we have to take a guess?"

"It's not import-" the other Buffy started, but was interrupted by her Xander.

"He tried to rape Buffy."

Right. Okay. The vampire tried to rape one of his best friends. The moment he fully understood the words, Xander was disappointed that he was so slow. That lack of speed meant that he wasn't the first to reach Spike, but he wasn't that far behind Faith either.

"Get out of the way B." Unfortunately, the other Buffy had been even faster.

"We need him. I need him."

"Nobody messes with my friends and gets to live. Sorry B, but that ain't gonna happen."

"Let her come, I'll kick her ass," Spike muttered from where he was hiding behind the other Buffy. As if he'd stand a chance against a Slayer.

"Than you'll have to fight me, Faith. Something you weren't too successful in the last couple of times we did."

"I'm not her."

"Faith! You can't kill him!" Dawn interrupted.

"Why not, D? It's what you told X to do in your letter, isn't it?"

"He was here when I got back. We can't make the time-line any worse than it already is."

"'Course we can, and besides, maybe it solves the problems."

"No, it would be totally different. It would really destroy any chance of fixing this, and I want to go home." Faith was wavering, and Xander knew that Dawn could see it as well. "Please Faith? You wouldn't want me to come back with you and take Xander from you, would you?"

Faith laughed at that, but stepped back from the vampire as well. "As if you could. Anyway D, because you asked so nicely I won't dust him. Just keep him away from me, and he'll be able to enjoy another sunset."

"Xander?"

Damn. No matter how much he wanted to stake the vampire, or preferably pin its body to the ground with blessed silver stakes in order to enjoy the sight when the sun rose, he knew that he wouldn't stand a chance against the other Buffy. And his own Buffy didn't appear to want to help either. Alright, she probably felt the same way as Dawn in this regard, and had some more distance. No matter how strange that last part sounded.

Stepping back, Xander took a deep breath of the fresh night air, and looked over at the group who had been at the source of their existence. "Alright, I won't even try to fight a Slayer, but there is no way that I'd pass up an opportunity to stake the vampire. Like Faith said, keep it away and it might just survive. If a corpse can survive that is."

"I wouldn't be so cocky, droops," Spike growled. "You wouldn't stand a chance against me."

"Is that why you're hiding behind Buffy? The strong brave creature that needs to hide behind his protector?"

That pushed the button Xander had been hoping for, and Spike flew past Buffy to teach him a lesson. A lesson he was more than prepared to receive as he had a stake with Spike's name on it. Except that Spike never reached him. Buffy, his Buffy, had intercepted the vampire before it had taken more than three steps, tackled it to the ground, and pressed a stake into the skin covering its dead heart.

"Try that again, and I won't care about time-lines anymore," Buffy hissed at the vampire. "No vampire, soul or no soul, hurts my friends and lives. Consider this your one and only warning."

Having said what she wanted to say, Buffy got back on her feet and turned to her counterpart. "Take that away, and we can talk about some more important things. I'm pretty sure that there are some things we can discuss."

"Spike wasn't the only one at fault here," the other Buffy protested, although even she seemed surprised at how quickly his Buffy had intercepted Spike.

"I know. I'll handle these two," Buffy said with a nod at both Faith and him. "You take this filth away, but still somewhere you can keep an eye on it."

With those words, and an angry look on her face, she then turned to Faith and him. "B-" Faith tried to calm her down.

"Don't B me Faith. I may not like the choices she's made: Spike should never have been allowed to live after he had given her all the information she really needed, but it's not our place to correct those mistakes. They have to do that themselves."

"But Buffy-" Xander tried as well.

"No Xander. It's not our place. Free will, remember? Look, why don't you two go talk to the other Xander for a bit? I'm pretty sure he feels the same way about Spike as you do, and you can give him some tips on how to go about ridding himself of Spike."

"I thought you said?"

"They have to do it themselves, but I don't see any reason why we shouldn't help them a bit. Anyway, you only have a couple of minutes to talk to him before the young Xander and Dawn will arrive. They are the most important ones here. Keep them out of trouble, and make sure you get the chance to take that letter before he wakes up." Having said what she needed to say, Buffy turned away to join Willow and Tara in talking to the other Willow.

Xander looked at Faith for a moment, before shrugging and moving to his counterpart. "Hey."

"Hey. Shame huh?"

"Why haven't you staked him yourself?" Faith asked. Apparently the other Xander hadn't quite forgotten what Faith had done to him as there was a barely visible flinch when she spoke.

Like the other Buffy though, this Xander did try to ignore his own feelings. Or maybe Dawn had overestimated the hatred they still felt for their Faith. Whichever the case, the other Xander answered Faith's question in as normal a tone as he could manage. "He has been useful to us, and after a while we got used to having him around. Besides, staking someone who can't fight back isn't something I'd feel good about."

"Trust me, you wouldn't lose a night's sleep over it," Xander told his counterpart. "But enough about the walking corpse, tell me something about yourself. I understand from Dawn that you've been engaged."

"He ran out on me, but I decided not to curse him for it. Yet." the blond girl who joined them said.

"You're Anya right?" Faith spoke up.

"Yes, and you're the Slayer who likes to kill people."

Ouch. Even after having experienced both Cordelia's and Faith's ideas of tact, this Anya was pretty crude. "That's the other me."

"Oh right. Well, you've never tried to hurt me so I can forgive you. If you don't go around killing people in your world, what do you do for fun then?"

"Having my way with Xander."

"Oh, you have orgasms with him too? That is so great. We don't have a lot of time, but there should be enough time to compare some notes. Tell me, how many orgasms does he give you each day on average?"

Seeing the wicked grin appear on Faith's face, Xander turned to his counterpart who looked the way he felt. "Do you think it's time we started running?"

….…

He remembered the search as going very easy, but then he'd believed at the time that the demons would be held off by the other group of time travelers. Now that he knew that they weren't concerned with demons, but instead would spend at least some of that time talking with their counterparts he was on alert in case a vampire or demon would try to stop the young Xander and Dawn.

So far they had managed to retrieve the amulet, and deliver it back to the other group, without anything particularly dangerous showing up. The worst was a single newborn vampire that had been dispatched by Faith before it had even managed to completely dig out of its grave. Which meant that following the two around might have been called a boring job. Of course, being outside, during the night, in Sunnydale could never actually be seen as boring, but in this case it was his companions who made it even more interesting.

"See how close they are?" Dawn pointed out with a smug smile.

"Just because he hasn't met a real woman yet, doesn't mean you should confuse desperation with interest D."

"Hey! I wasn't desperate!" Xander whispered in defense of his younger self.

"Yeah, he wasn't desperate. He was in love."

"Love doesn't happen that fast. I'll grant you he's in lust, but you've actively set out to seduce him and from what I understand of your world you probably asked that Anya chick for pointers."

"I would've figured that all out by myself!"

Faith smiled at that, and Xander was starting to feel like he really should have been somewhere else. Somewhere he couldn't hear these two talking about him as if he were a side of beef. Weren't they supposed to be in love with him or something? This wasn't how you talked about someone you loved, was it?

"After the fact maybe, but I gotta say you're not doing too bad for someone without any experience."

"Not too bad? I've got him eating out of my hand."

"But that's not what you want him to eat, is it?"

Oh god. "Please stop this," Xander whispered against all hope. Why did women always think it was alright to discuss his sex life while he was standing next to them? Didn't they understand that maybe he didn't want to let the entire world know about everything he did?

They didn't listen though. "Well no. But he starts eating more interesting things once we, I mean they, reach the motel room."

"Where you'll bring all your theoretical experience to bear," Faith pointed out.

That didn't seem to sit well with Dawn, and she countered with her own point. "At least it wasn't the 'Wam, bam, thank you Xan' thing you did to him back in my world."

"I did that? Damn, that sucks. You know X-man, once we get home I'll make it up to you all night long."

Now that did sound interesting, but it was Dawn who spoke up next. "Hush, they've gotten to the alley."

"What's so special about that alley?"

"Watch and learn," Dawn smiled at Faith.

Watching his younger self be thrown against the wall and ravished was a weird experience. He had no real recollection of this moment, but he sure wished he did remember. Over the past couple of days they'd all started to regain some of their memories of this night, and Xander really hoped that this was one of the memories that would come back. Not that he planned to let Faith know about that, but still...

"Okay D, I gotta admit you're not doing too bad here. You're moving a bit too fast in some places, and too slow in others, but overall you're doing pretty good. Like I said though, your technique needs work. Mini-X doesn't know any better, but if you plan to seduce the older one from your world you really should get a bit better. From what that Anya chick told me, he's pretty good. At least as good as my Xander."

"Uh, Faith? Could we perhaps not talk about that?"

"In any case, because of what you did for me with Allan and all, I told him that he might want to pay some more attention to you. Consider it my way of thanking you. Just remember to scream my name at least once while you're busy. Oh, and I'd really love it if you did that while your sister could hear you."

"I'm not going to shout the name of any girl during sex," Dawn hissed back.

Deciding that it really was time to change the subject, Xander was relieved when a distraction came along. "Aren't those two of the potentials?"

Dawn cast a glance at the scene. "Oh yeah, they don't know about us. Well you, the younger usses, or whatever. Buffy probably send them out to look for us so they wouldn't get in the way."

"Why not simply tell them about it?" Xander wondered.

Dawn shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe she did and all this is just for the younger usses benefit so that we don't get suspicious. Hmm, now that I think about it, that actually makes more sense as it explains the Anya comment."

As they watched the young Dawn lead the potentials away, Xander decided to ask another question that had been bugging him. "So, why don't you ever tell me your name? The others had no problems telling us theirs, but you never did. Including-"

"You and B?" Faith suddenly interrupted, doing her best not to laugh. "I didn't know you were that kinky X."

"What?" A bit annoyed that he was distracted from asking Dawn his question, Xander tried to figure out what Faith was talking about.

"Mini-X was just imagining a threesome with B and D here."

"I didn't know they were sisters!" he hissed at her, trying not to blush too hard. Damn, had he known that the young him was going to say something like that, he'd have tried to keep Faith away from here. No doubt he'd be hearing about this for years to come. Time to change the subject. "Anyway, what I tried to ask is why you never tell me your name while the others do."

"They're leaving, but we know where they'll end up so we don't have to follow them very closely. There won't be any danger here," Dawn said before answering his answering. "I don't tell any of you my name because Willow thought it was dangerous if I did."

"Why?" Faith wanted to know.

"Because of who and what I am. If any of you would remember my name when I'm made it might have an effect on that and change the time-line."

"Oh, okay."

Not entirely sure he followed that reasoning himself, Xander decided to point out that the other him and Dawn had enough of a lead now. "Do you have any idea how long-" Okay, that didn't work, let's try again. "I mean do you know- How long will they-"

"What he wants to ask is how long will the two of you be fucking before the other D leaves?" Faith helped him out. Well, helped wasn't exactly the right word as he wouldn't have put it like that. It was his sex life after all, and he shouldn't be talking about that with these two—at least not at the same time. Having had to listen while Faith was talking with Anya had been bad enough.

"I'm not sure actually," Dawn said while frowning in thought and licking her lips. A gesture that made her look even cuter and more beautiful than ever. And also served to remind him clearly why he'd been attracted to her in the first place. "We could wait outside until we see her come out, and then move in to take the note."

"I don't know," Faith said with a lecherous smile. "I think it would be better if we followed them to their room and waited until they were done."

Yeah that made se- Wait a minute. The walls in that motel weren't exactly thick. "What?"

"You heard me X. I'd love to hear you two working out, so to speak. When you told us about this, you were far too light on the details, and now I have a chance to find out firsthand. If you don't want to come, that's your problem. You know how I get when..." Trailing off she raised her eyebrows in a manner he was very familiar with, and looking into her eyes he knew exactly how she wanted to spend that time.

She knew he couldn't resist her when she was like this. "But Dawn..."

"I won't mind," Dawn said. Which definitely wasn't what he'd expected.

"What? But you were..."

"As long as I get some quality time myself, I can live with it."

"Quality time?" Faith growled a bit, acting all territorial. Oh god, she really was pushing all his buttons, wasn't she?

"Not like that," Dawn smiled. "I'll have my own Xander to do that with when I get back. But I do want some kissing and stuff. I won't sit by, watch you ravish him, and hear the other me have sex without doing anything myself. I think that would drive me crazy. Although it is pretty hot. Too bad my Xander didn't come along as well."

Okay, that was a disturbing thought. Even if it was himself, having another guy around wouldn't have been something he liked. And that thought was enough to snap him out of his aroused state. Well, not entirely, but enough for him to think the situation over. "I think I'll wait outside though."

"X?" Faith smiled sweetly at him.

Oh, oh. This wasn't good. "Yes?"

"Do you remember what I am?"

"Of course," Xander replied with a sinking feeling.

The teasing grin on her face told him what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth. "Then what makes you think you've got a choice?"

….…

Before stepping through the shimmering portal, Dawn said something to her sister that made Buffy laugh. This was their cue. It was time. Turning to the Dawn he'd gotten to know these past days, Xander had to admit that he was sorry to see her go. Especially now that he'd been forcefully reminded of how her mouth tasted.

"I guess this is it, huh?"

Dawn only nodded in reply, although there was the suspicion of tears in her eyes.

It was Buffy who spoke up then. "Come on, we wouldn't want you to miss your ride, now would we? Isn't there a Xander on that world who you need to seduce?"

Considering Buffy's initial reaction to that whole thing, Xander thought this was pretty much out of character for his friend. Until he looked at her, and saw the same barely contained tears that were in Dawn's eyes. Oh boy, they weren't going to cry were they? Not that he had anything against being emotional, but his shoulders always got wet when his friends cried.

"Yeah, I guess," Dawn muttered. "I'll miss you guys."

"Hey, you've got other versions of us there. And they like you too."

"Not for all of you," Dawn replied to Willow's attempt at comforting her, before doing a little teasing of herself. "Well, some of you I won't miss quite as much."

"Yeah, you wouldn't want there to be real competition for the X-man, would you?" Faith shot back.

"Competition? Hah! If you weren't already dating him you wouldn't stand a chance."

"Too bad we can't find out if you're right about that," Faith smirked.

Unfortunately, this crossed the line a bit too much. "Okay, that's enough. I'm not a piece of beef you know."

"Oh come on X, you know you'd love to see us fighting over you."

"No I wouldn't," Xander vehemently denied, while quickly shutting away all thoughts of a mudfight between the two. Or even a pillow fight where they were both wearing close to nothing and sitting on a large bed with feathers flying all around. Bad Xander! He shouldn't be thinking about stuff like that, especially now that Dawn was leaving again. Still, he couldn't let out a soft groan as he imagined exactly what would happen when-

"Damn X, I didn't know you'd be that interested," Faith said huskily, causing him to open his eyes again in shock. When had he closed them? Horrified he looked at the others, who either looked at him exasperated, were close to laughing, or—in the case of Dawn and Faith—horny. Damn, that wasn't what he'd wanted to do while saying goodbye.

"I-" he started, but was cut off by Dawn.

Placing a finger on his lips, she smiled at him. "It's alright. I'm happy that you think of me like that, but Buffy was right and I really should be going now. They are waiting for me."

She said the last part with a nod in the direction of the portal where Buffy and Willow were patiently waiting for her to return. Well, he'd never seen Buffy wait patiently for anyone, and he doubted this was an exception, but thinking of it like that prevented him from having to feel any guilt. "Yes. It was..."

"Yeah, me too," she smiled, before gathering her courage and taking his head in her hands she made him bend down so she could kiss him.

Unlike in the motel, where she'd jumped him when Faith had her back turned for a moment, there was no sense of urgency to this kiss. This meant that for the first time in six years he was able to lose himself in her taste. It was very good, something he was sure he'd be able to enjoy and made him wonder why he hadn't done so earlier during her stay. A cough from Faith immediately reminded him of the reason. He was seeing someone, and there was no place in that relationship for Dawn. Even if she'd want to share.

Hmm... share. No! Disengaging from her, he smiled while once again trying to banish the thoughts of both Dawn and Faith doing all sorts of things that he'd dreamed about what seemed all his life. Hey, he was a guy, and therefore entitled to fantasies like that. At least, he thought so.

"I'll miss you too," Xander told Dawn as he noticed the flash of disappointment in her eyes when he broke off the kiss. "You were unlike anyone I've ever met, and I think that's pretty cool. If you manage to get the other me, he's a very lucky guy."

"Of course he is," she smiled back while the tears were finally starting to trail down her face. "And I'll get him. He's mine after all."

"Right," Xander smiled, while trying to swallow away the lump that was growing in his throat.

Dawn had already said her goodbyes to the others earlier, which meant that this time she only gave a short wave before running over to the other Buffy and Willow. Even this short goodbye was probably a bit too long, as he could see the strain on the other Willow's face, but nobody complained. Aside from the fact that the other Dawn wasn't supposed to know about them, it had been deemed safer if they stayed away from the portal. It was a kind of magic unlike any they were familiar with, and the Willows had decided there was no sense in taking any risks.

As Dawn hurried over to her own family and friends, they could see as the other Buffy gathered her in her arms, almost as if she wanted to say goodbye as well. That was weird. They would be together again, wouldn't they?

Xander shrugged it off. Buffy was probably afraid something might go wrong again, and she didn't want that to happen without saying goodbye to her sister. Once Dawn—his Dawn, if he could call her that—had stepped through the portal Buffy turned back to them with a little wave, and a shout that he couldn't really make out. Apparently Buffy and Faith could though, and they looked at each other strangely. "Did she just?"

"She probably meant to say-"

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Faith nodded. "What else could it be?"

They didn't explain it any further, and his Buffy replied with a staking motion that he did understand very well. Although judging by the way the other Buffy shook her head he doubted it was going to happen. Too bad. And then, without wasting anymore time, the two stepped through the portal.

"Well," Buffy started with a sad expression on her face as the portal closed behind Willow. "I guess it's over then. Dawn is back with her own family, and we can go home again."

"Yeah," Willow sighed. "I was really starting to like her, but at least this taught us something."

"Always with the learning, Red. Don't you think about the fun part of it?"

"I do, but talking to the other me was..." Willow trailed off, but Xander already knew what she wanted to say. And he agreed. While his own counterpart hadn't tried to end the world, there was more than enough for him to think about.

"Yeah, gotta admit that seeing the others afraid of me wasn't exactly my idea of a vacation either. But cheer up, it's not like Blondie's ever gonna let you do something like that."

"But what if-"

Willow's rebuttal was quickly silenced by Faith. "No buts. It's not gonna happen. You're the good gal, remember? The sweet and innocent one. Well, maybe not quite so innocent anymore. Right, Blondie?"

"Faith!" Tara said in a shocked, and highly embarrassed tone. Although Xander couldn't say if it was because of Faith's words, or the lecherous tone she said it in. Not that Tara shouldn't be used to that by now. After all, Faith hadn't based the girl's nickname on the color of her hair. Well, not the hair most people got to see at least. He still hadn't figured out what Willow actually had said when Faith had managed to get her drunk, but Tara hadn't been happy with it.

Turning away from where Faith kept trying to cheer the two up, he looked at Buffy who had a smirk on her face that was undoubtedly very similar to his own. "She always gets them out of a funky mood, doesn't she?"

"Yeah," Xander smiled. "She can pretend to be as hard as she wants, but she cares deeply about us all. We're her family, and keeping us safe and happy is all that matters to her. She's kinda like you in that regard."

"Flatterer."

"Hey! I'm serious. Both of you always make sure that the rest of us are safe."

"Yeah, and you never do anything. Right?" Buffy shook her head. "No buster, we both know that you've done as much as me. Anyway, are you going to show me that letter my sister wrote? We have to wait while the others do the whole ritual anyway. And can I say again that I think that using Dawn's blood is really icky?"

"Well, Willow said it would work with just that. Otherwise we couldn't have returned without Dawn."

"Yeah, yeah," Buffy impatiently said before returning to the subject that really interested her. "I've heard the story too. Now, are you going to let me read the letter, or is it full of stuff I really don't want to know?"

"It's not that bad."

Faith had apparently heard what they were talking about, as she spoke up. "Really X? I thought it was full of tips about the things you should practice before she got back."

"Hey! Not everything in life revolves around sex."

"The interesting stuff does," Faith countered with a smirk.

"Well, maybe, but- Hey, that's weird."

"What is?" Buffy asked him.

Instead of answering her, Xander turned the letter around. He'd read this letter dozens, if not hundreds, of times during the past six years and knew every single word and smudge by heart. Which was why he was so surprised now that he took the time to look at the letter that they had retrieved.

"It's different."

"Whadda'ya mean, different? Different how?"

"The handwriting looks a bit different: not much, but it's not quite what I remember either. Some of the words are written differently as well, and it's not complete. The part about when I could tell you about everything is missing."

"You probably just missed it," Buffy exclaimed, although he could hear the doubt in her voice.

Of course, he might have missed it, if he hadn't known where it was. But he did. "No Buff, I've seen this letter so many times that I can dream what it says."

"Is that when you make those weird noises in your sleep?" Faith attempted to bring some levity into the situation.

Ignoring his girlfriend, Xander continued. "This is the letter I've had for all these years, not as old of course but still that letter. Except for that small part that's missing."

"Are you certain?" Giles now asked as well, although he looked more puzzled than disbelieving.

"Yes, I'm certain. No, I haven't made a mistake. Yes, I know exactly what it said and where. And that spot is empty."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Willow cried out, getting close to panic. "This could mess up the entire time-line again. We have to do something."

"Yes we do."

The words were spoken softly, and for a moment Xander almost didn't recognize who'd spoken them. But when he did, his eyes went wide in surprise. "Dawn? How?"

"You're holding the original letter, we need to add some things and put it back," the girl said from the shadows where he could now barely make her out.

"How did you get here? We just watched you leave."

"Can you believe that it went wrong again? Apparently the Powers that Be, or the cosmos, or God, or whoever, believes that I'm not allowed to return to my original world. From what we discovered it has something to do with how we used the Key. Although I should still be able to get back to your world, if you still want me."

"Of course we do," Buffy immediately spoke up. "Why wouldn't we? And why are you hiding in the dark anyway?"

"I'm scared," Dawn whispered just loud enough for them to hear.

"Scared? Of what? I don't plan on hurting you D," Faith attempted to calm Dawn down.

"I know Faith. For the past year you've been my only friend, even going so far as to-" Dawn cut herself off. She wasn't crying. He had enough experience with one of his friends crying to know that that wasn't what was happening, but he had a feeling that crying was actually what Dawn wanted to do more than anything else.

"Dawn? Are you alright?"

"I'll be fine Buffy, I only need some time to pull myself together, and then I'll be right as rain. It probably won't take more than a couple of weeks." At that she left out a sharp barking laugh, and Xander had to do his best to repress the shivers that it caused to run down his back.

What had she gone through? It had probably been pretty bad for her to act like this. "Dawn, you're scaring me."

"Me, scaring you?" She laughed again, as if it was ridiculous to think that she might be scaring him. "No, I have to remember that I'm back here. I've been watching you for most of the night. Well, I also talked to the other Buffy so that I could tell her what happened this time. She was so surprised when I explained the theory Faith, the one from where I was, and I came up with, but after talking it over with Willow they agreed that it was probably right."

"Theory? What the two of us came up with a theory?" Faith asked with a frown on her face. "And how come I never noticed you watching us?" Good questions, certainly the second one because she'd never been able to sneak up on any of them before.

"Yes we came up with a theory. It was you and me against the world. Don't worry though, I won't bother you with the details. And as for watching you, well it wasn't all that hard as I knew where you'd be, remember? Besides," she suddenly whispered, "I didn't have much choice about getting better at not being noticed."

"Dawn, is there anything we can do for you?" Jenny asked, probably feeling responsible for the young girl.

"Not unless you can stop everything from happening. We have to put that letter back. Without it everything will go wrong, and the other world will happen."

"Dawn, you're safe here," Tara spoke up. "None of us is any danger to you. You trust me, don't you?"

"Yes," came the slow reply. "I trust you, but..."

"It's alright. You're safe. You can rest now."

"No, first the letter. The letter needs to be replaced, and I have to write the date thing on it."

"Then come out of the shadows, let us help you."

"I'm so scared," Dawn once again whispered. "I don't understand it. I know that you're safe, and that they aren't here, but I'm scared of what you'll think of me."

"We wouldn't say anything bad, you know that."

It worked. Tara's soft, comforting, words actually had the desired result and he watched as Dawn detached herself from the shadows she'd been hiding in. It was bad. There were similarities to the girl he'd just watched jump through the portal, but there were a lot of differences as well.

At first glance, she didn't look all that different. Sure, she looked a bit older, her hair was cut by someone who wasn't very good at it, and she had a scar above her right eye, but that wasn't all that bad. It wasn't the first time one of them had been wounded, and while most of their scars were hidden by the clothes they wore, they were still present.

No, the thing that bothered him the most were her eyes. She looked scared. She looked as if she was ready to fight even now that she was safe among them. But somewhere inside that obviously tormented girl was the Dawn he'd gotten to know over the past days. A Dawn who was just waiting to get out again. Silently he vowed to himself that he'd help her get her life back.

Then she had reached them, and after first hugging Buffy almost to death, while whispering things he couldn't hear, she moved on to Faith, who she was just as happy to see, and then on to everyone else. When she reached him though, she hesitated.

Slowly, and warily, she extended her arm until she reached his throat where she put her fingers against the pulse point. The relief that was evident on her face when she felt his heartbeat was something he really didn't want to think about. Not that he had the time, because the next moment his arms were filled with a crying Dawn who kept saying she was sorry.

Sorry for what, he didn't know. And he had a feeling that it would be a long time before he ever found that out. Disentangling herself from him again, Dawn collected herself. "All right, let's do the letter thing and go home. I want to see mom again."

* * *

Allen Pitt, charmedloverloes, and dogbertcarroll: Thank you for the feedback. Now, let's do the answer thing.

You're right: these scoobies haven't gone through all the hardships that the others have and that would probably mean there are certain things they wouldn't be able to handle as well as the others. On the other hand, quite a few of the problems the others had were caused by themselves, and if mistakes like that are prevented it might not teach them as much, but would prevent people from being killed.About Spike, while it might not have been very clear in the story, as I only hinted at it, Dawn only found out about it shortly before they did the whole time travel thing. Which means she was still very angry at him, and if it was my sister who it happened to I would have done my best to stop it from ever happening.  
Now, the big question: Glory. I'm sorry, but that won't be discussed in this story. On the other hand, by now you'll know that there is a chance for sequels so who knows?


	5. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

This was the life. This was exactly what she'd wanted since she was a little girl: the hot sun caressing her equally hot body while lying at the pool with an ice-cold glass of ice-tea next to her, and nobody who would bother her about anything. In the house itself her cook would be busy preparing the dinner she'd planned for tonight, and at the same time her other servants were cleaning the house.

And what was she doing? She was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing: getting a tan. With a lazy movement she took hold of the glass, and took a sip of the drink. As the cool liquid seeped down her throat, she repeated her earlier thought. This was the life.

To think that at one time it had seemed impossible she'd actually manage to get this far. Back when everything had gone wrong she had almost given up the hope of ever achieving this. Almost. Because she could never really give up on her dreams. All those times that she'd had to walk around covered in filthy slime or other filthy stuff had in the end paid off.

Of course, she could never have done it without the support of her best friends, something that she had no intention of ever forgetting. Especially him, he had stood by her no matter what had happened. Even now, after so long, Xander was still the most important man in her life, and sometimes late at night she might even go so far as to admit that she missed him.

Unfortunately the circles she now traveled in weren't suitable for him. His honesty would clash as much with the people surrounding her as his clothes usually did with each other. Still, memories of him kept turning up in her daydreams. That sweet, half-embarrassed, goofy smile of his that always showed up when he thought he'd done something that would anger her. As if she could actually stay mad at him. And of course, there was always the quality time that they'd spent together. It was said that you never forgot your first, and she always believed that their situation was the best proof of that.

"Miss?"

Turning half-around she looked at Brian, the current head of her staff. "Yes?"

"You have a visitor," he told her.

"Really?" She frowned, before smoothing her face again. There was no need to look ugly because someone had interrupted her free time. "Who is it?"

"Mister Harris."

Xander? Already? "Well, tell him to get out here, no need to keep him waiting."

"But-" he tried to raise what she knew was a pretty good point. But that point didn't matter in this situation. In fact, Xander couldn't have come at a better time.

"I can't remember saying this was up for debate."

Brian nodded, obviously not happy with her decision, and turned back to the house. Poor guy, he probably had a bit of a crush on her. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't her type. And that would only have mattered if he hadn't been a member of her staff. Just because her father had slept with his secretaries didn't mean she was going to lower herself to the same level. Besides, he was like way too old for her.

"Cordy," Xander started as soon as he exited the house. "You've got to help me."

"Hello to you too," she answered in reply, not bothering to actually turn around and look over her chair. "Yes, I'm doing great, thank you for asking, and how about you? I see you actually left that hellhole in order to visit me. Of course, nobody else would have started about me helping them before even giving a simple greeting."

He sighed at that, probably feeling like she was exaggerating. Well, he had been in the wrong here so he shouldn't be complaining. And indeed, as expected, he then said the words he was supposed to say. "Hello Cordelia. It's good to see you again, how are you?"

"Much better," Cordelia approved. "I'm doing great. I've been asked for a movie that is guaranteed to be seen by practically half the world, and I'm doing a voice for an animated movie as well. It's the first time I'll have to do that, so I'm a bit nervous. As a matter of fact, I'm having dinner tonight with the producer and several other members of the cast. I think it's going to be a lot of fun to work on that project."

"That's nice," Xander told her, while finally approaching her again. Obviously he didn't like to talk to the back of her head, and she had no intention of contorting herself into an impossible position just so that he could see her. There was a perfectly fine chair next to her after all. Besides, this was also where the fun part of this meeting was going to start.

"Is that all you can say?" she asked before she heard him stop at the sight of her body.

"Cordy!" The strangled voice was all she could wish for, and it was in her most innocent voice that she answered.

"Yes Xander? Is something wrong?"

He spluttered at that. "You- You're naked!"

Feigning a shocked expression on her face, she trailed her hands over what she knew was a perfect body. "Say it ain't so!"

"Cordy!" Xander tried again.

"What?"

"Why are you naked?" By this time he'd continued walking, doing hard his best not to stare at her assets. Poor guy, it wasn't as if it was actually possible for anyone to resist looking at such perfection.

Still, Cordelia decided to answer his question exactly as he asked it. Teasing her ex-boyfriend was simply too much fun. "Because I'm not wearing any clothes?"

"That's not funny," Xander said in that strangled voice, while sitting down on the lawn-chair next to her. Not that this meant that he actually dared look at her, oh no, he was staring at the pool. "Why aren't you wearing anything?"

"Because I want to be tanned all over? Sheesh, I'd have thought that after all this time with Faith you would have figured that part out."

"She doesn't sunbathe in the nude. Sunbathing is useless because of her Slayer healing," he explained to her.

Now that was something Cordelia hadn't known. "Really? I knew there had to be a downside to all that Slayer stuff of her and Buffy."

"Yeah well," Xander shrugged. "That still doesn't tell me why you're naked though."

"I told you already," she said with an exasperated sigh. "I'm tanning."

"Aren't you afraid that your picture will show up in dozens of magazines, the internet, and who knows where? This is Hollywood after all."

"Oh please, you don't think that I'd let just anybody enjoy the sight of my body, do you? It's one of those things for which magic is actually useful. Nobody can take a picture of me without my permission."

"You use magic to stop the press from coming here?" Xander asked incredulously.

Cordelia simply shrugged, an action that she noticed with more than a little satisfaction drew Xander's attention to a certain part of her body. Well two parts actually. That jiggled a bit. "Why not?"

"Isn't that misuse of magic or something?"

"Oh please, I can afford to hire someone to do it so it can't be misuse. And besides, what better goal is there? Aside from keeping me healthy of course, which is why I pay another mage to look me over."

"You hi- Never mind. I don't doubt that you'd do something like that."

"Well duh," Cordelia replied. "The only trouble with that sort of thing is to ensure that you find someone capable of doing what you want. But even mages need to eat so there is always somebody looking for a job. Besides, it's not all that hard for them. The spell around the house is only refreshed every two weeks or so, and I go for a checkup once a month. It's just like having a normal doctor check my health, only better."

"Okay, okay. I understand. Sorta." What wasn't there to understand? Sure, she had been a bit hesitant about using magic as well, but this was simply such a good use for it. And as it meant that she would never have to fear that someone might be watching her in her own house, it was well worth the money she spent on it. As long as they weren't going to do crazy things like asking for more money. Well, if that happened she could hire someone else, and if they tried to do something bad she knew more than enough people who'd be able to deal with that situation.

Tearing her mind away from those musings, she returned her attention to the matter at hand. Hey! Xander was once again staring at the pool. In a way it was flattering, but it wasn't what she wanted. "Don't you know it's impolite not to look at the person you're talking to?"

"What?" That statement surprised Xander enough that he turned to look at her again. "Oh! But you're naked! It wouldn't be very polite if I stared at certain other things either."

"Don't look at them then," Cordelia said, very much enjoying Xander's discomfort. "After all, it's not like you haven't seen any of it before."

"That's true," Xander admitted, trying very hard to look at her face. "But you're still as distracting now as you were then."

"Why thank you," she smiled at him. "That's very sweet of you."

"Yeah well," Xander shrugged.

"It kinda reminds me of how you were when you took me to that dinner."

"Eh, Cordy, that may not be the best memory to think about right now."

"Oh hush. I don't remember every single detail. But it was a couple of months before we graduated, on a day that my parents had this conference sort of thing in New York, and because I felt lonely you had invited me to have dinner in a very nice restaurant. You had really done your best that day, and it was really romantic."

"Yeah well," Xander shrugged again, clearly a bit embarrassed by how she was telling it. Not that he had any reason for it.

"That was on the twentieth of March, but I was already nervous on the nineteenth, because I knew what was going to happen after the dinner." Oh yes, even the memory of that night was hot. "I ate the chicken Alfredo, while you had a steak, medium-rare. We talked about everything, and nothing in particular. And then we went to my house."

….…

"So, this is it," Xander said while shuffling his feet in a shy way.

"I really enjoyed tonight," Cordelia answered in reply.

"Me too, but I should go."

"Do you wanna come in?" Both of them spoke at the same time, but it was her question that he replied to.

"A-are you sure?" he said, obviously as nervous as her. It had been so obvious the entire evening that tonight was going to be her night, but even now the both of them continued to step around the issue. She knew what he wanted, and she damn well knew what she wanted. The two of them, on the ground, in the kitchen, in the shower, on her bedroom floor, in her bed, and everywhere else that was humanly possible. It was a Friday night, and neither of them had anything important the next day.

And her parents would be away for the entire weekend. Something that she wanted to take advantage off for long, hard, exhausting hours. Oh yes, she could already imagine how his hands would trail down her body. For months now she had dreaded taking a shower at school, because she knew how risky it was. At home her showers had turned into a time of bliss where she had to bite her lip in an effort not to shout Xander's name as she finished. And that was something she really didn't want to let the other girls in the class know. That was far too personal. Meant only for her, and her boyfriend.

"I'm sure," Cordelia therefore said while staring into Xander's brown eyes. He knew what was likely to happen, but did he know exactly how far she wanted to go? That her preferred fantasy about tonight meant that he would be crawling home on Sunday? Crawling because he didn't have the strength to stand up.

Xander swallowed nervously, an adorable sign that she cherished. She knew that she wouldn't be his first. Not that she had any idea of who the girl had been, but she wasn't the only one in that regard, and she didn't care anyway. Past lovers weren't the issue here. "Okay then."

Sending him a bright smile, Cordelia led Xander down the path to her front door. The key trembled in her hand, but she managed to shove it in the lock. Just like she hoped that Xander would sho- Not yet! Turning the key, taking it out of the lock again, and stepping back, she turned to him again. "It's open."

"So it is," he replied solemnly.

"I-I think that maybe we should go in."

"Yes, that, eh, would be a good idea."

Neither of them moved though. Instead they stared at each other for several minutes. Why was her heart fluttering so badly? And why was her mouth suddenly so dry? Licking her lips she noticed how Xander's eyes were drawn to that tiny action. She also noticed that the two of them had started breathing heavy. She really needed to get inside before they did something her neighbors could enjoy. Which really wasn't something she enjoyed.

"Cordy," Xander whispered as he cupped her chin in his right hand, and used the other to caress her face. Oh god, this was getting better and better. No, worse and worse. She couldn't do this out here!

Stepping back, Cordelia noticed the sudden flash of disappointment in his face, a flash that he tried to hide as quickly as he could. She knew it was there though, and wanted to take his pain away. At least, that was the most logical conclusion she later came up with for what she said. "Not out here, inside."

Horrified at her sudden wanton behavior, she then fled into the house, knowing that Xander would follow closely. What to do. What to do... She had made preparations. There was something that a night like this required, and she had prepared it. Hearing Xander approach from the hallway, she quickly kicked out her shoes so that he would know she had no other plans, and walked to the kitchen.

The red wine, or the champagne? She had put a bottle of each ready, and now she suddenly didn't know which she was supposed to open. Didn't one of them have to breathe for a while before it was really good? But which one? She'd known before she left, but now she'd forgotten! Why hadn't she marked that one? Or maybe written it down or something? There was of course no reason that they couldn't drink both of them during the next couple of days—it wasn't as if her parents would actually miss the bottles—but which one would be the best for tonight?

"Cordy?"

"I'm coming!" Oh boy, now that was a loaded sentence. Once again she looked at the bottles before her. The memory of an erotic story she'd once read—well if her parents hadn't wanted her to read it, they should have hid it better—came to her. In that story there had been quite some amazing things that had been done with champagne, and none of them involved drinking. At least not from a glass. Which meant that for drinking she should take the other one.

Okay. Corkscrew. How do you use something like that? She'd only opened a bottle once before in her life, and that had been with the help of her father. Not that it had been difficult at that time, so why couldn't she do it this time around? She was holding the bottle in one hand, and the corkscrew in the other while attempting to fit the one in the other when a pair of strong arms suddenly took them from her. "Allow me."

"Xander," Cordelia breathed as she was surrounded by his arms.

"Why don't you get the glasses?" he whispered in her ear. The hot air as it played along the sensitive skin was enough to make her shiver, and desperate to at least try to restrain herself—for now—she slipped out of his embrace to get the glasses.

This at least was a task she had no trouble in succeeding at, and when she turned around she noted with satisfaction that Xander had succeeded in opening the bottle. Wait a minute, satisfaction because he succeeded where she failed? That didn't make any sense. But she didn't care, and ignoring that inner voice she quickly rinsed the glasses before joining him back in the living room.

Sitting so closely next to him on the couch, Cordelia was warmed by Xander's body heat. Not nearly enough yet, but before going any further she wanted to have some of the wine. This was supposed to be a romantic evening and as she hadn't been allowed to have alcohol during dinner—ridiculous laws—it had to come after. Wine was a part of romantic evenings, wasn't it? As was chocolate, preferably molten and distributed over the body of her love-

Maybe other thoughts were better. Taking another sip from her glass of wine, she rolled the liquid in her mouth, trying to determine what exactly people believed was so great about it. Then she had another sudden thought. Why would she have to think about other things? Wasn't the reason she'd invited Xander in because she believed that she was ready to take the next step in their relationship? That she wanted to experiment as much as she could? Work through most of the Kama Sutra in a single weekend?

Cordelia put down her glass, and looked at Xander. Looked at the way his lips were moving as he was talking to her. She didn't know what he was saying, nor did she care. She wanted those lips. She knew what they tasted like, but she wanted them to explore her entire body.

"Xander," she interrupted his monologue.

He tried to say something in reply, but she didn't care. Instead she attached her lips to his, and climbed on his lap. This was wonderful, as always. She could taste what little of the wine he'd tried, but most importantly she could taste him. That taste she could drown in, but also a taste that today was only a prelude to what was to come. Disengaging from his lips, she whispered in his ear. "Make lo-"

….…

"Okay, I think that's enough of a trip down memory lane," Xander said while he kept his hand pressed against her mouth. Interestingly enough she noticed that he was sweating, obviously he hadn't remained unaffected. Just the way she liked it.

Still, he was stopping her from talking, but she knew exactly how to turn that into her advantage. Allowing her tongue to dart out of her mouth, Cordelia licked at the hand keeping her quiet. An action that quickly caused Xander to retract his hand in shock. "Cordy!"

"Oh, don't be like that. You always liked it when I did things like that. And I didn't limit it to your hand either."

"Cordy! Please! I came here for help, and I can't explain the situation when you're sitting there naked," Xander pleaded. It was a bit of a weak excuse in her opinion, but she'd probably teased him enough now anyway.

"Alright, just hand me the robe there and I'll put it on."

"Thank you," he said relieved, while handing it over to her.

Of course, she had no intention of letting him off that easy. Accepting the robe, she got to her feet, and standing mere centimeters from Xander's face she allowed him one last look at her glorious body. A body he would still have been worshiping on a daily basis if she hadn't left Sunnydale half a year after their graduation.

The funny sound he made as she stood there reminded her of why she had loved him so deeply for so long. In the end though, she had wanted to move forward with her life, and as Xander insisted on remaining behind to help his friends there was nothing to it but for them to split up. Well no, she admitted to herself, they hadn't split up immediately. First they'd tried to do the long-distance thing, but it hadn't worked out. And then Faith had moved in on her territory.

"Cordy," Xander pleaded, sounding even more desperate than before. "Please, put it on."

Okay, now it really was time to stop before she actually started to hurt him. Putting on the robe, she sat back down. "Don't worry Xander, I have no intention of trying to steal you from your Slayer. Being torn apart by Faith isn't exactly my preferred way to die." Yes, she was being gentle with him. The poor tortured soul.

"Thank you," he breathed. Whether it was for the fact that she'd dressed, or for the words, she didn't know.

"You're welcome. Now tell me, what is it that brought you here? I mean, you hardly ever come to visit me anymore."

"I have a problem," Xander started.

"Well duh, you've already said that," Cordelia interrupted, now impatient to hear what his problem was. "Tell me what it is."

"Faith and Dawn. They have made some kind of bet, or started a race, I don't know. The fact is that both of them are trying to get into bed with me."

"Oh no! That sounds horrible!" Cordelia mocked, before turning to a specific part of what he'd said. "How is Dawn anyway?"

"She's getting better. These past couple of months helped her get over whatever it was that happened to her. Not that she's ready to talk about what happened yet, but I'm sure that will happen sooner or later."

"That's good to hear, but you know I still haven't gotten a good explanation of where she came from in the first place."

"It's a time-travel thing. Futures that happened, and didn't happen. In any case, for her the most important thing is that she is also the one who I met six years ago."

"You mean the one who?"

Xander nodded at that. "Yeah, and she promised she'd come back to claim me. Well, that has happened now, and Faith isn't too happy about it."

"So they each want you, but for some reason Faith has let her live?"

"Yes."

"So, what exactly is the problem?" Cordelia asked. "Because it sounds to me more like your idea of heaven than hell."

"They're getting worse all the time. I even had to flee to a motel after a while, not that that stopped Faith from breaking in. And besides, do you really think that whoever loses that fight will let me or the winner live?"

"But aren't you already dating Faith?"

"For some reason that I don't understand she decided that the both of them should have an equal shot. She broke up. Sorta. She wants me to choose her over Dawn, and not because she's the only available one." Xander explained. "Women."

Interesting, Cordelia quickly hid the grin that threatened to break out on her face as she heard that. Now this offered some nice possibilities. "Why don't you offer them the let's all be happy solution?"

"And what is that?" he asked warily.

"Invite them both, and have fun. Just because I didn't want something like that doesn't mean they're not interested."

As expected, Xander's eyes glazed over for a moment, before he shook his head. "No, Dawn has already made clear that she's a single-Xander woman, and I'm pretty sure that Faith isn't interested either."

"Well, there is always the time-sharing option then."

"Cordy! Please, I need a realistic solution, and not one that is based on my own fantasies."

"Well, what do you propose then?"

"Could I stay here for a while? Just until the worst is over and the two of them have calmed down a bit. I can't live like this."

Pretending to think it over, Cordelia stood up and started pacing. "Hmm, well in theory it would be possible. Of course, at least Faith knows that you'll come here for help, so she'll want to search the house. That means you'll have to be hidden very well."

"I can hide, if you help me, I can hide."

Time to have fun. "And what's in it for me?"

"What?" Oh, wasn't he cute when he looked confused? "What do you mean?"

"Well," she said while approaching him once again. "I'll have to go to a lot of trouble to do this, not to mention risk the wrath of a Slayer, so I'm just wondering what I can get in return."

"Any- I mean, we can discuss that."

"Yes we can," Cordelia said with a predatory smile on her face. Getting up from her own chair, she straddled his lap in a surprising move. "But I've already made my decision."

The naked fear in Xander's eyes was almost enough to make her back down. From her position she was able to judge the reaction of his body though, and that told her that he really liked their current positions. "What?"

"You see," she said while trailing her hand across his face, "I was thinking about you before you arrived. I have made an important decision, and I needed your help for it."

"What kind of help?" Xander squeaked. Not his most manly hour ever, but his obvious nerves did nothing to deter her.

"I've decided that I'd like to have a baby."

This shut him up, and Cordelia watched with barely contained glee as Xander could only gape like a fish. It wasn't until about a minute later that he actually was able to say something. "W-with me?"

"Of course you doofus. Don't worry though, my contracts stop me from having the baby immediately. The best time for me to get pregnant would be between three and six months from now. Of course, we should practice regularly before that time. I was thinking once in the morning, and a couple of times during the evening and night. How does that sound?"

"Bu- bu-"

"Yes, that sounds great, doesn't it? I can already hear the small patter of feet from our children."

"Children?" Xander finally managed.

Cordelia looked at him with a beatific smile gracing her lips. "Of course, we can't stop after the first one. You know how lonely it can be to be an only child, I wouldn't want to do that to my own child."

"Bu-"

"Miss Chase?"

Turning her attention away from Xander, Cordelia looked at Brian. "Yes?"

"You have an urgent phone call."

"I'm busy right now, can't they call back later?"

"It's your agent, and he says it's very important."

Sighing, Cordelia got up from Xander's lap. "Sorry honey, but duty calls. Why don't you stay here, and we'll continue this later." Giving him a quick kiss on his forehead, she turned around and walked to her office. A quick glance at the phone told her what she'd already known, and instead she switched on the audio feed of one of her security cameras.

"Are you leaving already mister Harris?"

"Yes Brian, I have something else to do, and who knows how long Cordelia will take on that phone call? Could you tell her that I'll call her soon?"

"Of course," Brian answered Xander before letting him out.

Settling herself in the comfy leather chair behind the desk, Cordelia waited for Brian to come to her. He had paid enough attention to Xander to realize when she was about to cross the line she didn't really want to cross. That had been his queue to get her, and he'd done his job well. So, when he finally knocked on the door, she didn't waste any time. "Come in."

As Brian walked into the room, he confirmed what she already knew. "Mister Harris has left."

"I know, thank you." Such a curt dismissal might not be entirely what Brian deserved, but she'd been enjoying herself. Once he was out of the room, she finally picked up the phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.

"Buffy Summers," was the reply.

"Hey Buffy, it's me."

"Cordelia! How are you?"

"I'm as great as ever," Cordelia replied with a smile. She had spent so much time with the wannabes and stars in LA that it was a rare treat to hear someone ask how she was doing for reasons that had nothing to do with getting one role or another. Even if that same person had already asked the question a couple of hours ago. "Anyway, he just left."

"That was quick," Buffy noted.

"You can stake vampires, and I can play men. Especially Xander. He was like putty in my hands, and acted almost exactly the way I'd expected. I do feel sorry for him though."

"There's no need for that. I'm pretty sure that secretly he's enjoying the attention."

"Maybe, but Buffy you should have seen his face when he saw me!"

"Why?"

"He came on me when I was sunbathing. In the nude."

"No way," Buffy breathed. "Tell me more."

"Later, you still have to tell me why you wanted me to scare him away."

"Dawn."

"Your newfound sister? What about her?"

"I do kinda like her, but now that she's staying it means I've got about eighteen years of sibling rivalry to catch up on. And as she already knew me, this war between her and Faith gives me the chance to catch up with her. And of course, she needs something to stop reminding herself of what had happened to her."

For a moment Cordelia wondered what it would be like to have a little sister. That was probably one of the few things she'd told Xander that was the truth. If she ever had children, she had no intention of keeping it to only one. She could easily support more, and that way they could keep each other company. And she had no intention of letting her career get in the way of her knowing them either. "I understand, I take it she hasn't really told you anything about it yet?"

"No," Buffy said in a slightly depressed tone.

A tone that Cordelia really didn't want to hear, so she chose to continue with Buffy's other reason. "Okay, so this is a sibling rivalry thing for you? Who are you rooting for then?"

The answer didn't come immediately, and when Buffy spoke again it sounded as if she had to do her best to concentrate on the question. But she did answer, and Cordelia was sure that she'd get Buffy out of this funk she'd gotten herself in. "Difficult to say, I like them both, and wouldn't mind seeing both of them being embarrassed either. Oh! Have I told you yet about how Dawn was waiting for Xander in the living room of his apartment? Naked?"

"No, but it sounds like fun. Was this before or after Faith broke into his motel room?"

"Before. It was the reason he left his apartment."

"Okay girlfriend, give me details." And snuggling a bit deeper into the big chair, Cordelia listened with great enjoyment to the stories Buffy told her about the attempts of both Faith and Dawn to make Xander choose between them.

* * *

Author's note: This is the end of the story, although there will be a sequel. When? I don't know yet. Also, because of the new rules of this site, my replies to reviews will no longer be written inside the stories, but go directly to the reviewer.

On a different note: A little over three weeks ago it was made public that patents on plots have been applied for. I wrote a story showing the consequences this will have which can be found under the same username on fictionpress (dot) com. You can use the link in my profile.

It's a short story so please read it, and think about what this means for you. I don't care if you give me any feedback on it: I just want you to think about the consequences.


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